


Watching You from This Side of Heaven

by Pygmy Puff (ppuff)



Series: Afterlife [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Flashbacks, Javert is a ghost, Love Story, M/M, Madeleine Era, Missing Scenes, Post-Seine, Prostitution, Tags for Chapter 2:, Toulon Era, and Valjean is being a saint, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ppuff/pseuds/Pygmy%20Puff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert jumps, only to—quite literally—wake up on the Seine. Heaven is tentalizingly just out of reach. With eternity to spend, Javert is given the unlikely opportunity to get to know Jean Valjean more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Seine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert didn't know what to expect after he jumped. He may have had vague notions of a variety of possibilities, none of them good. But he certainly didn't expect this.

When he resigned from life, Javert hadn’t considered the possibility that his resignation would be rejected.

Though he shouldn’t have been surprised at this turn of events. He had, after all, been rejected numerous times throughout his life.

“Mmmmmrrgh,” he moaned, muffled screams that escaped his throat as his broken back protested against his bruised ribs. This shouldn’t be possible, his confused mind told him. He wondered if his lungs had been pierced through.

Then there were words drumming in his ears: _He is lost. Please help him. Please show him the way._

Immediately, the choking sensation was pulled from his lungs; the current that had dragged him into the bottom of the river was gone.

He was free to breathe again.

 _If this is death_ , Javert thought, _then it feels too much like life_.

He didn’t remember anything after that.

-

When he opened his eyes, the burning in his lungs was gone. His spine and ribs had been made whole, and every square inch of his skin mended. His clothes—still a policeman’s uniform, he briefly checked—were dry.

His eyes were once again bright, Javert could tell. The sharp clarity of his youthful vision had returned to him, and he no longer saw Paris through the hue of fuzzy edges and blurred shadows. He hadn’t realized his eyesight had weakened so much over the years. It didn’t deteriorate enough to warrant the purchase of costly spectacles, but it was definitely not like this, when the surface of the Seine now appeared completely different to his eyes. He never thought water could possess so much texture. Guided by the rushing current, the flowing waters were all intersecting lines and swirled waves, foamed bubbles forming and bursting at each turn around the rock. When the wind subsided and the currents calmed, the river-top still retained its intricacy, a black-blue canvas filled with moving patterns that looked like a crumpled bed-sheet pulled straight from Javert’s laundry bin, full of crisp wrinkles and sharp creases that seemed to render the river solid, like ground that can be trod on.

Which brought him back to his present curiosity… Javert wasn’t walking on water. No, even a soul that had just resigned itself to eternal damnation would not be so blasphemous as to boast in a feat once performed by the Son of God. But he wasn’t anywhere near the riverbank. He was, Javert concluded, _floating_ over the water, hovering just high enough to keep his boots dry (why was he still wearing boots? And why weren’t they soaked through?). He placed one tentative foot over the other and managed to move… precisely nowhere. Walking was useless in his present state. So how did a ghost—for Javert was now certain that he had been condemned to this half-existence as his punishment—move about? Thinking perhaps he could navigate through air as a turtle through the ocean’s depth, he tried moving his arms and legs in a swimming motion, attempting to move forward, backward, upward, _any_ ward… to no avail.

Ah, ghosts haunt the places of their deaths. Perhaps it was never a matter of preference, but of necessity.

Javert straightened his weightless body and decided to start doing the only thing he knew how: standing guard over the Seine. He had an eternity to learn patience. He may as well start now.

-

The next days—or was it weeks or months? He couldn’t really tell—passed in a blur. Faceless Parisians crossed the Pont au Change in both directions and went about their busy lives. No one seemed to notice him. In the beginning, Javert had spent the better part of a day pondering the physiology of specters. Folklore about ghostly beings abounded, which meant at least some ghosts were visible to humankind. Why wasn’t he one of those? He didn’t think his appearance had changed much since his jump, so he should still look quite formidable. Being able to haunt the bridge and instill terror into the hearts of idle bourgeois would have provided some much needed entertainment to relieve his boredom.

When summer gave way to autumn, Javert concluded it wasn’t boredom that was driving him to the edge of madness. He had been a solitary man in life; he had chosen to stay away from people. No, what was inching him closer to despair was his complete invisibility. The power of choice, of having the control to remove himself from another person’s company, was taken from him. Death had punished him with nonbeing. He would never again be seen, acknowledged, or even ignored. He simply _wasn’t_.

By the time winter came, Javert found himself supplicating to whatever being would listen for a change—anything—that would interrupt his utter waste of a useless existence.

Then one day, Javert noticed an opening, appearing on its own, that was made of golden lights so bright that they would burn the eyes of any living human being who dared look into it. The gate-shaped opening had appeared further upstream, gleaming above the dark waters like a floating doorway promising entrance into another world. He couldn’t quite make sense of this. The passersby, both the busy commuters who never spared the river a glance and the more leisurely pleasure-seekers strolling along the bridge, seemed oblivious to such a heavenly vision. Perhaps only the dead can see this portal. Javert did not allow himself to think that perhaps the opening signified release from his posthumous judgment. The alluring golden rays that beckoned him dangled like a feast before the famished, for Javert still could not move from his spot, no matter how earnestly he willed his legs to step forward or his ethereal body to just _float_.

The sun rose and set in quick succession, blending icy winters and the beginning of the spring thaw into one long stretch of timelessness. Some days, there were clouds and rain. Others days, God mocked him with clear blue sky and a cheerful sun.

The people of Paris remained uninterested in the glowing abnormality that had increasingly become a source of torture for Javert. He had long since given up hope of ever moving closer to and crossing into the light. And if that was the sole reality of his impasse, he may have learned to endure it in stride. But since the doorway appeared, he had seen countless others approach and pass over—semi-substantial forms just like him, but purer souls who had been granted the gift of mobility and inheritance into the afterlife. Seeing those souls pass over, Javert could only turn in place and set his face toward the bridge and his back to the heavenly light. But curiosity would inevitably spin him back around, and he found himself passing timeless days counting the number of souls joyfully disappearing into the doorway. Heaven was generous to many, it seemed, despite Javert not being counted among them.

Sometimes, a passing soul would catch his eyes—the only interaction he’d had with another being since he jumped—but none ever paused; he once thought a little girl had smiled at him.

Then one day, a soul not only caught his eyes and smiled, but halted his entry into paradise and instead approached Javert.

“Hello, Javert. Fancy seeing you here.” The man with many names and identities had disregarded Javert’s titles and called him by his only name.

In death, Javert was neither inspector nor hunter of convicts. Souls were either saved or damned. Jean Valjean had been marked for glory. He had not.

He grunted in reply.

“I’m sorry—that is, about your passing. Were you alone when it happened?” Valjean spoke as if no one should ever have to die alone. Javert did not point out that when he jumped, he had made sure no one was around to see him.

“Was it recent?”

Javert refused to answer.

Suddenly, something akin to horror seized Valjean and he exclaimed, “Javert, are you damaged? Did something happen? Can you –”

“Yes, I can hear you and I can speak.”

Relief flooded Valjean’s countenance. Javert had never expected to see Valjean direct such a sentiment toward him. And while he would have been irritated at such a show of emotion in life, now he felt oddly… touched.

“You?” he returned the question. To refuse Valjean’s attempt to engage him in conversation would be improper after the man’s incomprehensible display of concern. “Was it recent?”

Valjean shook his head. “No, not quite. I lingered for a while until the child was born.”

“Child?”

“Cosette married a year ago.” Oh yes, Valjean must be referring to the wh – _Fantine’s_ (there was no title in death) daughter. The Beggar Who Gives Alms had often been seen going about his business with a young girl, the evidence of yet one more good deed to add to Valjean’s scale to tip his soul in favor of paradise.

Javert barely held his attention through Valjean’s dejected description of his daughter’s wedding and life as a married woman. He did not think he would ever learn how to love so sacrificially, to the point of self-deprivation. It must have all been worth it for Valjean, for his face was practically aglow at each mention of ‘Cosette.’

“Shortly after, my health began to fail,” Valjean finished. “Then I passed.”

“Nonsense. You were as strong as a mule the day I –”

Javert choked back the remaining words, but it was too late. He chanced a glance at Valjean and saw that he had understood.

“You died on that day? How?”

“I… fell.” He hoped this would be reason enough.

But Valjean had always been stubborn to a fault. If life hadn’t managed to change him, Javert shouldn’t expect any miraculous transformation in death.

“The students!” Valjean exclaimed. “They must have recognized you and thrown you over.”

Unfortunately, Javert had always been honest to a fault, in life and, apparently, in death as well.

“No. I… it was a mistake.”

“Why would being thrown over be a mis –”

Valjean’s eyes bulged, and Javert felt pinned by the weight of those eyes that were going through a quick succession of horror, realization, then eventually infinite sadness.

“Why?” he asked quietly.

“What does it matter, why?” Javert snapped, the only way he could keep his voice from trembling. He was tied to this place and Valjean wasn’t about to leave anytime soon, but neither of these facts obligated Javert to disclose how he had come to his current state of despair. “I am here and I am stuck. Isn’t this enough for you?”

Valjean simply kept looking at him. Javert turned his face away. Then, when trying to avoid the man became even more awkward than acknowledging his presence, Javert brought his head back to fix his gaze just below those too-penetrating eyes. The slight downturn of Valjean’s lips, not so much to have formed a frown but very much an expression of his displeasure nonetheless, told Javert that no, what he said wasn’t enough.

The corners of Valjean’s lips sank further down. Javert crossed his arms and pressed his lips into a thin line.

 _Merde_ , how long could they be stubborn with each other like this?

Valjean waited calmly. Javert grew more agitated by the second.

If others could see them now, how might they describe them? Perhaps they were like two stone statues, unmoved and unmovable, one refusing to give up and the other refusing to give in. Or perhaps they resembled a lion and a gazelle in the suspended moment right before the chase, when the predator contemplated its target and the prey readied itself to run for its life. But statues do not hold sway over one another and animals do not seek to manipulate each other’s mind, so the two souls were reverted back to being Jean Valjean and Javert, foolish men who had spent the better part of their lives chasing and fleeing, oblivious to the irony that in death, they would face each other through neither running nor panting, but by simply fixing obstinately in place.

Jean Valjean could turn at any moment and cross into everlasting joy. Why must he bother with a damned soul?

How long did they stand in place like this? Javert thought he’d heard the chirping of birds greeting the morning sun not too long ago, but now the sun veered west and had acquired more orange and red as it readied to retire for the night. In the changed aura of twilight, Valjean’s hair gleamed a brilliant white that rivaled the brightness of that mysterious heavenly portal. But Valjean’s white carried with it more softness, more welcome, and at this thought, Javert felt foolish for hiding what must be glaringly obvious to Valjean.

Valjean’s fully formed frown had told him as much.

 _You_ , Javert didn’t say, didn’t know how to be honest with the reason of why he jumped without suffering the kind man to believe it to be his fault.

Javert was deep in his thoughts when he felt something around his legs.

“Val – what are you –”

Jean Valjean had wrapped his arms around Javert’s thighs, and he was pulling.

Javert had long been acquainted with Valjean’s strength and supposed that even old age hadn’t diminish the sheer force those arms could exert on the object of their choice. And yet Valjean couldn’t lift him even a hand’s breadth.

“Stop it!”

Valjean refused.

Evening drew nigh, with the sky having taken on the sun’s colors. Valjean was still laboring away.

Painful as it was for him to say – “Let me be, Valjean.”

Valjean’s firmer grip around his legs and a renewed effort to tug upward delivered the _no_ on behalf of his tongue. Beads of sweat had formed on Valjean’s temple, neck, back. His breathing grew heavier.

“Valjean, you are incorrigible.”

“Come on, Javert, you have to want to move too.”

Javert almost laughed. “You think I _want_ to remain at the place of my demise for all eternity?”

“Then work with me here!”

He allowed his body to relax and stopped fighting against Valjean, but even this was futile. He looked to the horizon. The sun was beginning to sink into the river. The air around him should feel more chilled, and yet though Javert still could not be moved, he realized he was feeling, for the first time since his death, warmth. Valjean radiated heat, and this heat was spreading up from his legs all the way up to his head, forging a protective layer around him against the coming coldness of the dark.

Javert didn’t remember when he had last felt warmth, even during the summer months. Sensing Valjean’s furnace-like grip made him want to be alive again, to be able to warm his hands by the fire, to feel his body heat up after a particularly thrilling chase leading to an arrest.

He _wants_. But still he could not move.

“Give up, Valjean,” he said, his voice weak as what hope he had dared cling onto disappeared.

Valjean was still pulling.

“Monsieur, I’m not one of your charity cases. Let go of me this instant!” He was exasperated now, and maybe this was better, so he didn’t have to contemplate his very real fate of never leaving this fixed point of his death, ever.

Valjean looked up at him, a flash of obstinate eyes. “You would truly rather stay here than to let me help you break free?”

“I want with all my heart to be free. But you need to know your limits, you fool.”

“I won’t know until I’ve tried, won’t I?”

“Well you’ve tried,” Javert pointed out. “It doesn’t work.”

Valjean set his jaw stubbornly. “No, it only means I have not tried correctly. If you can see the doorway, then it must be God’s will for you to cross over as well.”

“Careful, Valjean. To presume control over God’s will is blasphemy, even for someone as saintly as you.”

Valjean looked up at him again. This time, the arms loosened their grip. “I am no saint, you of all people should know this.” The words were accompanied by a light chuckle. “I seem to recall hearing thief, fraud, and convict from your lips whenever we’ve met.”

“I did not always call you that –”

“But you always thought it!”

Valjean had stopped trying now. Javert looked down at the crouching man before him, meeting and holding his gaze. There was no accusation or resentment there, just a glimpse into a soul who was better than Javert in every way and yet still considered himself inferior by comparison. Javert may once have agreed with Valjean’s verdict of himself, but he no longer did.

“You are all that, Valjean, yes. But you are also… more.”

Even their dimmed surrounding could not hide Valjean’s radiance as he beamed an almost-boyish grin up at Javert.

Javert lost himself, stunned, in this sight. He felt unworthy to be the recipient of such an open, pure gesture. If their places were switched, could Javert have kept himself from treating an obviously condemned soul with nothing but disdain? Valjean was a pious man, and yet not once had he brought up what they both knew: that Javert had committed a mortal sin. Valjean had delayed his entry into paradise to try to save one last soul. And even though he didn’t succeed, his effort alone had shown Javert what goodness the man was capable of. He wondered if their interaction today might be sufficient to sustain him for eternity.

The sky had turned less pink and more black.

“The sun is setting,” Valjean murmured. “Do you sleep?”

“Night and day make no difference in our state.”

“Can you sit?”

“I am not tired.”

“Well I’m tired –” Javert snorted. “– and I desire to see the Seine from a different perspective.” Valjean raised an arm to tug at Javert’s hand. “Come, sit.”

He sat.

He couldn’t remember when he had allowed his eyes to close. He wasn’t tired, but the heat of Valjean next to him reminded him of what comfort used to feel like. The sun set slowly—time had slowed down somehow—and Javert perceived rather than saw the dimming light through his closed eyelids. He heart felt full, swelling with thankfulness as he vowed to treasure this moment of time like the unexpected gift that it was. This was the most free he had felt since he died and regained consciousness in his present form.

The Seine swallowed the last of the sun’s fading beams.

He was asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! The idea of an afterlife fic gripped me and I'm mostly done with writing the rest of the chapters. Will do my best to update soon.


	2. My life passed before me like a dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert sleeps, but he does more than dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added tags for the second chapter, as I feel the need to warn for some of the things Javert is seeing. If I missed anything that you think should be tagged, please let me know!

Javert woke to two realizations: first, he was surrounded by prison walls, and second, he could move.

The horror of one muted the thrill of the other. As he inspected his whereabouts closer, horror was replaced by a sense of disgust so intense that even the nostalgia that had risen unbidden from old memories could not overcome the roiling of his stomach.

He was back in the prison of his mother, back to the mockery of his childhood home.

Javert floated through familiar passageways and passed faces he never thought he’d see again. Here was Allard to his right, one of the guards who used to bring him and his mother food. And there by the prison door was Marcel, who had no distinguishable attributes save for his ability to pin the blame on others whenever things had gone awry. He turned a corner; he knew the exactly where, and whom, he was looking for.

His mother was all knotted hair and sallow skin draped over a too-thin body. But even in her horrid estate, the natural beauty of her youth shined through, an unlikely shoot sprouting out of a piece of rotten wood. She was young, no more than thirty and certainly of an age that the older Javert now would consider a foolish grisette. From his current perspective, he conceded that yes, his mother had been as foolish as she was young.

But to his eight-year-old self—Javert’s features softened when he spotted his child counterpart playing with loose strands of straw that had fallen from what passed as their bed—his mother was old and fully responsible for getting them into the circumstances that they were in. He had been merciless even as a boy.

Javert noticed that it was dark outside and the small opening high up on one of the prison walls was barely letting in the fading light of dusk. His mother sensed the passing of time too, for she glanced at the window and her body tensed. The boy Javert continued to arrange straws into geometric figures, oblivious to the change of mood in the air around them.

Minutes later, a man emerged from the shadow and approached his mother’s cell. His mother looked up with an ashen face, but put on a fake smile. The man was unremarkable with a face that could easily blend into the crowd, and so Javert turned his attention to nervous fingers locating and finding a key from a pocket. Those fingers failed several times to stab the tool into the requisite keyhole before they finally managed to unbolt the lock.

“I had to give Allard five francs for this, woman. It better be good.”

The boy Javert had retreated into the far corner by now, and Javert thought this was perhaps why he was never able to recall the man’s face in all the intervening years. The man made no pretense as to why he was here. He closed the cell door behind him and strode forward, stopping just short of looming over his mother. She remained sitting on the floor with a face that had gone even paler.

Javert didn’t miss the stubborn resolve flashing in her eyes. This was a willing transaction, he realized—as he had known all these years—the beginning of his mother’s descent into abomination.

The man busied himself at shedding his outer coat and loosening the lower portion of his waistcoat. But he cast one look at the far wall of the cell and his hands working hard at unfastening his trousers paused.

“The boy shouldn’t be here.”

“Then get us out,” his mother hissed, a vain attempt at keeping their exchange private. Javert remembered that his eight-year-old self had heard every word. He knew this day well. This was the day when he finally saw his mother for the whore that she was. Two days later, he would leave her and become an errand-boy for the prison guards. He would live the next ten years as a wretch in the gutters, but at least he had held onto his dignity, had managed to live an unsullied life.

“Ha! Him, maybe. But to get _you_ out?” Lips curled in disdain. Javert didn’t care to know to whom these lips belonged, whether he would one day see a colleague wear this same face. They were all the same. All men of darkness wore this same expression, then and now, vile men on the precipice of committing a deplorable act, yet who still deigned to condemn with Pharisaic self-righteousness the very woman they were about to abuse –

Javert caught himself mid-thought. Since when had he held anything other than utter contempt toward his mother?

“Javert, be a good boy and go to the next cell,” his mother coaxed, plastering a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. He watched himself get up without a word and squeezed through a particularly wide opening between the bars. Despite his height, he had been an underfed and malnourished child, his body thin like a waif. As long as his head could pass through an opening, his body had no difficulty following.

The guards knew of his coming and going. Javert wasn’t a prisoner. They didn’t care.

Javert had to force himself to watch what came next, and that by staring at a blank spot on the wall above his mother and swallowing the acid back down into his revolting stomach. Once the boy Javert was gone, it took the man mere seconds to free his trousers. He shoved himself unceremoniously into his mother’s face, who had to shift higher on her knees to keep the man’s prick from bumping into her nose.

What followed was the despicable sound of wet flesh slapping against and thrusting in and out of a gagging mouth. Javert squeezed his eyes shut, not willing to partake in what he was thankfully spared to have witnessed as a child. But he could not block out the sound, and especially not the occasional words of degradation, _bitch_ and _whore_ spat with vitriol by the man, which Javert knew only excited him more, bringing him closer to completion.

A strangled, choking noise that sounded both like a hiss and a whimper signaled to Javert that the man had climaxed. He wanted to keep his eyes closed, but something inside him seemed to demand that he pay attention to what would come next. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

The man had tucked himself back inside the façade of respectability; his mother was still on her knees. But unlike a moment ago, this time she was kneeling to plead. She tilted her head ever so slightly toward the cell bars, indicating the boy Javert next door.

“Do it then, please…” she begged, the word barely choking past her sobs.

Javert was quite certain that ghosts were supposed to be cold, but he hadn’t expected he would feel such a chill as if the entire content of a basin filled with icy water had been dumped all over him.

His eight-year-old self wasn’t privy to see his mother’s broken, yet earnest, expression and had completely misunderstood. She wasn’t pleading for more lascivious favors. No. She was pleading for his own freedom, for a better future that would take him outside of these prison walls.

The man loomed over his mother, grabbed her by the fabric bunched up around her collar and brought her face up against his. “You will service any and all of us at no cost. You will be available always. Are we agreed?”

His mother nodded without a moment’s hesitation, the willing sacrifice of a parent for the well being of her son. “Yes, yes!” she said. “Anything you want, just… please.”

The man let go, and his mother crumbled to the ground. He circled her with prowling steps, like a lion considering its prey. “Such a wonton, gluttonous whore,” was the man’s verdict after looping around her three times. And these words, which the boy Javert had mistaken as the pronouncement of his mother’s true character, now rang loudly in Javert’s ears. “Fine, we have a deal.”

A deal. Javert suddenly pieced this night’s incident together with the rest of his childhood years. Why would anyone take pity on a gutter boy and employ him with loose change and food? He was always cared for, however tattered his clothing and meager his meals. He had earned his _sous_ through hard work, yes, but there had to first be patrons willing to dispense those _sous_.

His mother had sold her very soul to give Javert a life that she could not give him on her own.

Later, after the man had gone, his mother tried to call his younger self back into her cell. Javert knew her calls would be futile; his heart constricted impossibly tighter at each of her successive pleas. The boy Javert had decided that night that his mother was scum. From that day on, he would have nothing to do with her.

Javert floated over to his younger self after watching his mother cry herself to sleep—he owed her at least this much as his penance. Young Javert, too, had cried himself to sleep. Even in his dreams there was a scowl on his face. God, did he always look like this?

Javert bent down to whisper in his younger self’s ear. “Your mother loves you,” he confessed, knowing full well that the boy couldn’t hear him. “You’re not alone in this world, Javert.You are loved.”

-

His past swirled around him like moving images. It was as if the memories he once held in his heart no longer had a place to call home, faces and surroundings bleeding out of him before they faded away to make room for newer memories. Javert supposed this was what happened for someone who no longer had the right over his body. He had become a bystander to his own life.

He saw himself growing taller and sterner, though his shoulders never did broaden as much as he would have liked. Soon, Javert found himself staring at a young Toulon adjutant guard.

The passing of time came to a halt when the young guard was brought face to face with a convict tied to the rack. “Who is he? What has this one done?” his younger self asked the guard next to him at the same time the older Javert gasped out a name: “Valjean.”

So this was how they first met.

“There’s no need to concern yourself with names here, boy. This convict has attempted escape. See to it that he’s properly punished,” the older guard said, then walked away to stand to the side, as Javert knew he would, to observe his younger self as a guard-in-training about to try his hand at flogging a convict for the first time.

Javert the Guard looked as if he were taking stock of Valjean, but the older Javert remembered what was actually going through his mind: the penal Code, which dictated that the punishment for attempt escape was fifty lashes.

Valjean was sullen, with his head hung low. Even from Javert’s present perspective of having known him for decades, the convict with matted hair and a filthy beard was no special sight to behold. Aside from his exceptional strength, Valjean was virtually indistinguishable from other galley slaves during his days in Toulon. The elder guard was correct. There was no need to get to know the person beyond the numbers here.

The younger Javert walked around to Valjean’s back. This particular memory presented no difficulty to re-experience. Valjean was guilty of his accused crime and should suffer the consequences. This was justice for a condemned man who still had many more years of refinement amid the hell fires of Toulon before he would one day emerge with a heart of gold.

Javert the Guard stepped back and readied himself. He then swung his arm hard, bringing down the whip with neither mercy nor hesitation.

Valjean screamed.

Javert could see everything so much clearer from a distance. With each lash that drew an angry red line on his back, Valjean’s arms strained harder against the ropes that bound him. His body was also straining, his ragged, shallow gasps inadequate to refill his lungs with the air that the rapid branding of the whip had depleted. Javert—both of them—counted to thirty. Both also knew it wouldn’t be long until the convict would lose consciousness.

What the younger Javert could not see was the one final struggle Valjean gave to cling onto himself, the rearing of his head like a bound heifer in its last attempt to pull free, unwittingly baring its throat to the butcher’s knife. For Valjean, the butcher’s knife that pierced him was the older Javert’s sharp gaze, a gaze that had been seasoned with decades of parsing human nature as Inspector, Interrogator, and Spy. There was no mistake: the eyes dulling into oblivion held in them a trace of despair. But as Javert looked closer, he saw something else there.

The anger made Valjean look almost familiar to the memories of Prisoner 24601 in Javert’s mind. Almost, but not quite. Not yet.

The younger Javert continued to rain down lashes onto Valjean. Thirty-eight… thirty-nine… forty… Valjean’s eyes were starting to roll back, but not before Javert glimpsed something shifting into place there, a vileness that was coming into existence: pure hatred.

“Stop, boy!” he screamed at himself, though he knew it was useless. His younger self’s single-mindedness in following the Code would prevent him from seeing when enough was enough. “Stop!” he ordered, shouted, pleaded. “You are destroying a man's soul. You’re creating a monster.”

Javert the Guard continued to tear at the flesh of an unconscious man, under the approval of his trainer: forty-four… forty-five… forty-six….

This was the day when Javert would earn esteem from his peers and gain recognition as a merciless guard. Now, Javert knew that today was also when Jean Valjean had given himself over to utter hatred.

-

He saw himself leaving Champmathieu’s trial with a self-sure sneer. There was nothing he could have done differently, but this time his consciousness remained in the courtroom. He observed Champmathieu and wondered how, as inspector of Montreuil, he had missed all the signs that pointed to the man’s innocence. It wasn’t long until there was a commotion in the courtroom and the esteemed Mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer was announced to have entered. Javert beheld Valjean, hair still dark brown, entering and being led to a seat in a private section behind the judge. Once his eyes were on him, he could not tear away. He saw each of Valjean’s thoughts screaming loudly from how his eyes gleamed and his face contorted. He could feel Valjean’s agony. He didn’t try to stop him; he knew what Valjean would decide to do. But why? Why would a man who had finally escaped the suspicion of the one remaining man who would condemn him now contemplate turning himself in? Just to save one innocent soul? Javert remembered all the other lives Valjean would save in the years to come, and he didn’t find this so hard to believe anymore.

“Valjean,” he found himself saying—to whom? No one could hear him anyway—“Your good deeds will never be performed in vain.” Valjean’s face turned then, and Javert felt as if those knowing eyes were looking right at him. Valjean made no acknowledgement of having seen the feared inspector. Yet his words seemed to have given Valjean the final assurance. When the time came and there could be no more delay in intervening on behalf of Champmathieu, M. Madeleine stood, steadied himself with a deep breath, and opened his mouth to speak.

-

“This is good news,” his younger self said into the newspaper. He remembered that short article well. A brief notice of the death of a convict while trying to save a man aboard the docked ship _Orion_. “Please, just believe Valjean’s dead,” he whispered, knowing that he would eventually give in to his doubts and pursue after Valjean anew. His younger self did not hear him.

-

He abhorred the prideful smirk on his own face as he gave orders to his subordinates about where to stand guard at all the key junctures around the streets of Paris. The young Javert was so sure that he had laid a perfect trap. And he had, if only his target was someone other than Jean Valjean. He could see it now, from his vantage point unrestricted by limitations such as height and physical barriers, how Valjean and his newly acquired charge decided not to run outward but _upward_ , how he scaled the wall to the convent’s garden as if it were a pre-rung ladder, all the while with a young girl in tow. Javert could not hold back the smile forming on his face. Nor did it particularly bother him that he appeared to be cheering a criminal on, letting out his held breath only until Valjean landed safely inside the convent’s garden and deposited the girl onto the grass.

It didn’t take long for his younger self to realize that Jean Valjean had once again escaped from his grasp. The cry he screamed was not a sound of humans. “Javert, please, give up on the chase. Just let him be,” he pleaded, on behalf of a good man. As expected, he was deaf to his own voice.

-

His life seemed to rush by him after that point. He relived through near-encounters with Valjean—locking eyes with him while he pretended to be a beggar to whom Valjean had given alms, finding an open window at the Gorbeau House where he now knew Valjean had used to escape—but none of those moments paused until time passed like normal once again when his (not much anymore) younger self was tied in a martingale, awaiting his death in the hands of foolish revolutionary students. Then Valjean came and took him to the alley. Valjean cut his ropes, Valjean ignored his goading, and Valjean spoke kindly to him. “You annoy me,” the still-alive Javert spat. Valjean gave his address.

Javert watched himself stomp off into safety, knowing that the seed of his death had been planted at this precise moment. But it was not Valjean’s fault. “Thank you,” he said to Valjean, willing for him to hear. Valjean kept walking back into the barricades.

-

Javert saw two old men and a dead boy by the opening of the sewers. If his erstwhile self had thought Valjean looked like shit—for his was quite literally covered in sewer muck—then he had no right to claim superiority on this matter. Inspector Javert, standing by the river bank, looked like he had been dragged under and run over by ten fiacres. Javert watched as they first deposited the boy at this grandfather’s house, then made their way to Valjean’s home. He noticed now that they had not once looked at each other. Valjean averting his gaze, that Javert could understand. But why did he not pay closer attention to his convict, to see how Valjean looked as tired as he himself had felt, to realize how alike they were to each other when meaningless epithets like convict and inspector were stripped away? Javert watched as he dismissed the fiacre, as he allowed Valjean to go inside his home, and that fateful moment when he stalked away from the house and toward the police station house, then eventually to the Seine. He didn’t try to stop himself. If the first time was because he had believed himself to have failed the law, then this time, Javert knew it was the only inevitable end for a lifetime of failing an even higher Law.

He was standing on the parapet of the Pont au Change, looking down at the furious current below. The sound of rushing water beckoned like a pair of manacles eager to clap over his hands, and it soothed him. It took Javert several minutes to realize that he was no longer observing himself, but was once again in solid form, standing on the bridge and about to jump. Very well, he thought, let this be done with.

He made to jump, but nothing happened. Around him, everything had stilled. The sound, the swirling of the Seine’s dark waters, _everything_ … stopped.

A voice spoke from behind him. “So you would do it again?”

Javert did not turn around. He felt no need to find out to whom the voice belonged. “To jump? What does it matter? I am damned either way.”

The man—for the voice was most surely male—didn’t try to correct Javert. Nor, Javert realized belatedly, was the voice kind. He was grateful for this. In life, he had begged for judgment but received kindness from Jean Valjean. In death, he would at last be justly punished.

“Then you accept your sentence?”

He didn’t ask what his sentence was. Having been shown a life full of pride and self-righteousness, Javert knew there was but one pronouncement suitable for his eternal fate.

With resignation and far too much tremor than he would like in his voice, he answered, “Yes.”

He didn’t remember jumping into the Seine again. He only knew that the world around him had gone dark.


	3. The beam in your eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert returns to the Seine. The guard resumes his duty.

Javert started awake; he had no recollection of falling asleep. Birds chirped in the distance and the people of Paris bustled about. Everything was still the same.

The reality of his unchanged predicament sank in when he realized he was floating in a sitting position just above the water. The morning sun shined bright today. Javert watched the flow of the current as gentle waves glistened like fluid gold down the river. Occasionally, pieces of twigs and brown leaves drifted past him and continued traveling downstream; more than once, flocks of birds paused from their flight to warmer climate to drink from the river.

Startled, Javert jumped to his feet and looked around. Summer had come and gone. How long had he slept for?

He searched his mind for recollections of his last waking moment. There was someone… Valjean. Jean Valjean had been here. It was a cold evening in early spring, when the air was just chilled enough for him to appreciate Valjean’s warmth. The man had coaxed him to sit and to watch the sunset with him. Javert had fallen asleep.

He looked toward heaven’s gate.

Valjean must have entered in.

He searched his mind for newer, fresher memories. In his dreams, he had been elsewhere; in those places, he could move. He had seen himself.

The opening of his mind’s door unleashed a torrent of images that came crashing like pages from a storybook coming to life: Javert the boy. Javart the youth. Javert the inspector. Javert the ungrateful son, merciless guard, traitorous subordinate to the mayor, prideful pursuer, and transgressor of an eternal sin. Each vivid scene from his past struck like a blow into his conscience, accusing him of all the moments when he’d done wrong and when he’d left the right things undone.

Javert had failed—God’s Law, the moral law, or whatever other name this higher Code went by—and he’d failed spectacularly. He remembered the mysterious man’s voice (not kind) and his own response (yes).

Perhaps the journey back through his life was mercy. For now that he knew why he was here—he was serving his posthumous prison term—Javert resolved never to wrongly hope for freedom again.

He resumed standing guard over the river, keeping watch over the Parisians and greeting souls entering into paradise whenever one would meet his eyes. Some nights, he would gaze into the horizon and send off the sun into the Seine, and he’d remember the warmth he felt that night with Valjean.

All things considered, he was almost content with his state of being.

-

By the end of autumn, over a thousand souls had entered into heaven. Seventy-two had met his eyes or otherwise acknowledged his existence. Of those, fourteen had smiled at him.

-

A specter floated into his line of vision one winter day.

“You,” they both said at the same time, both with curled lips and both speaking in a tone dripping with contempt.

If Javert thought Thénardier was despicable in life, then words could not describe how much more so he had become as a ghost. The wretch retained none of its passable traits of humanity and had been reduced to greedy eyes, a twisted mouth, and perpetual droplets of spittle caught in an unkempt beard. He had acquired an ill-fitting green cap that only covered half of his head. His ghostly form was hunched over. He reminded Javert of a giant rat.

A giant _walking_ rat. It did not escape Javert’s notice that, as a ghost, Thénardier could move.

They seemed to have arrived at this conclusion at the same time. Thénardier’s eyes sparked a chilling glee as his other facial features attempted to rearrange themselves into some expressions of joy, only to come out as a jumbled contortion that Javert was deciding between “grotesque” and “comical.”

“What’s the matter, ‘spector, too good and pure to enter heaven?” Thénardier hissed like a snake. Javert blinked to be sure the man didn’t also have a forked tongue. “Or can you even see heaven’s entryway? I bet you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

“I can see it,” Javert said curtly.

“And yet you’re trapped. Oh, oh! How interesting, this turnabout of things! Inspector Javert, always menacing us law-abiding citizens with your talks of law and justice. What were you hiding underneath that shiny, pristine policeman skin of yours, I wonder?”

“You’re in no state to judge, Thénardier,” Javert spat. “You too are a ghost.”

Thénardier threw his head back and laughed. “So I’ve noticed. Perhaps I like it this way. My wife’s also a ghost.”

Both Thénardiers were haunting the world together? Javert shuddered.

“Eh, I don’t s’pose you’d understand, _Javert_. This world has so much to offer, even to dead ones like us. Oh, but I forgot. _You can’t move_.”

As if to taunt him further, Thénardier started circling Javert, clapping his hands and wiggling his body about as he floated and flitted just far enough away from Javert’s reach. Those pointed, jeering words had triggered the negative feelings Javert had tried hard to bury inside him ever since he had accepted his sentence. A wave of bitterness washed over him, with anger and despair cresting in the not-so-distance ready to drag him under. He knew his immobility was punishment. But why could the Thénardiers move? Was his hypocrisy so much worse than Thénardier’s life of open sins?

“Cease this!” he gritted out through clenched teeth, and prayed that he could hold onto his composure just a bit longer, until the man would go away…

Thénardier, being the sort of scoundrel who took pleasure in others’ misery, continued to wiggle about as if his ability to remain afloat on the Seine depended on it. “Or what? You can’t order me around no more, ‘spector! What will you do if I don’t stop? Are you going to arrest me? Cuff me? Here, look, my hands are out, waiting for your cuffs. Come get me.”

“You know full well that I can’t!”

Thénardier broke out in a round of hysterical laughter. “ ‘Course you can’t. That’s why I offered, _baltringue_.”

Javert had been called many things, but never a coward. At this he snarled, straining his body forward like a mime forgetting his invisible encasement, only to crash into himself.

“Let me loose!” he screamed. “If you allow Thénardier to move, then I demand the same freedom!”

His words thundered in the silence. There was no song of the river to soothe him, no birds of the sky to chirp away the ringing in his ears. Thankfully, Thénardier’s _salaud_ and _connard_ had also been swallowed up. All that remained was Javert’s too-loud heartbeats pounding against his ribcage, making him feel strangely alive.

He looked around him. The mime’s case had thickened its glass walls and Javert now beheld everything through a haze. He alone could move, could struggle against the cage that trapped him. Everything else had stopped. Time was frozen.

Against his fury, a chill passed over him like a restraining hand. He heard no voice, but the hand reached into his mind and pulled out a memory, along with a tug in his heart which he knew to be a command to stop, to watch.

_He was a prison guard at Toulon. He was standing about five paces away from a group of guards, face turned away from them in contempt. The guards had selected a galley slave at random, kept him chained and surrounded him, and it had been a good ten minutes of each guard taking turns hurling insults at the convict. It was common practice, a game. Bets all around on how long it would take for the convict to explode._

_Javert had considered himself virtuous by refusing to partake in such deplorable “entertainment.” But he made no move to intervene on the convict’s behalf. Convicts were sub-humans. They snarled and attacked like animals. Whether their rage boiled over from fights among themselves or from his colleagues’ provocation, the fact remained that animals did not deserve mercy._

_The unlucky convict would inevitably be sent to receive lashes or solitary confinement for “aggressive and rebellious behavior.” Each time the guards played this game, Javert would watch in pride, condemning both the convict and his despicable colleagues. He alone appeared righteous in his own eyes._

Javert jolted back to the present. The chilled presence had lifted from his mind, though what moments ago felt like a guiding hand now weighed down on him like an accusing finger. He looked at Thénardier, frozen mid-action not three feet away from him, as familiar words to which he had never given more than a cursory thought lodged uncomfortably in his heart: _Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?_

He brought a hand to his brow, wiping away the cold sweat there, his arm trembling from a sudden exhaustion that overcame him. The convict in his memory had looked at them— _all_ of them, including Javert—and seen guards overstepping their authority, breaking their duty to uphold the law; and the convict was right.

The opportunity to tear the beam out of his eye had long past. All that remained was for Javert to pay his penance, which came in the form of being confined to the Seine. No, he had no right to rile against heaven and _demand_ mercy. Not when he had extended none in life. Thénardier was despicable. But couldn’t the convict in his memory also say the same about him?

When time resumed, his mind was no longer on Thénardier. Eyes cast down, Javert pondered what it must have felt like to be one of the convicts, trapped by insults aimed to break both spirit and body with no way of escape. Gradually—thankfully—the weight suffocating his conscience eased.

Having perceived his sudden change of mood, Thénardier lost interest and stopped his taunts.

Sensing that the man was still around, Javert spoke in a calm tone that belied his newfound humility, “Monsieur Thénardier, as you can see, you did not succeed in provoking me to make a fool of myself. Now go away.” He paused long enough for Thénardier to disappear should he choose to; he did not. “Since you so wish to continue imposing yourself upon my company, then perhaps you can explain why you are here.”

“I –” Brows scrunched in confusion, Thénardier sniffed once, as if trying to decide whether he was speaking with the real Inspector Javert. But then he straightened his body (as much as the mouse of a man could) in a way that still said _you can’t move_ , accompanied by a look of superiority that only those who had never risen above their baser nature in life was capable of imitating.

“ _I_ am here because I can move. I am here because my children, my jewels, are inside that door.” He pointed toward the light. “So what if I like to come back once in a while to check on my _darlings_? I know I can’t enter, but maybe I don’t want to! I’m a parent, ‘spector, I love my children as much as any father out there. Oh, but you wouldn’t understand. There’s no one in there you want to go in for. You don’t know love, _Javert_. Such a pity.”

Lies, all of it. No parent who left their children to fend for themselves as _gamins_ among Paris’ streets could speak of love. No, the man was here for himself; Thénardier had come to make yet another attempt at entering paradise.

Revolted, Javert was done with Thénardier. He crossed his arms and looked out into the horizon in a way that clearly conveyed the same. Thénardier spoke some more—he didn’t hear a word—and may have attempted to circle him again. But Javert’s gaze on the far end of the river was steadfast, and when the setting sun came into level view with his eyes, Thénardier was gone.

For the first time since his death, Javert felt exhausted. So he sat, drawing his knees into his chest, just as he had done so that night when Valjean passed through.

Valjean. Three seasons had come and gone since he entered heaven. How was he? Enjoying paradise, surely. Warm. For he was always warm, always kind. Happy. No doubt he would be reunited with his loved ones, for in life, Jean Valjean had loved much. Was he reunited with the bishop that Javert once heard him speak of? Was his family, for whom he had committed his first act of crime, there to greet him when he crossed over? Was Fantine, the mother of his daughter, a woman who also had loved much in life despite all her sins, there as well?

Javert sighed. Loathe as he was to admit it, Thénardier was right. No one in heaven would be waiting for him. His thought flitted to his mother—not the misconception that the boy Javert had conjured up and held onto for his remaining days, but the loving, self-sacrificing parent whom Javert had seen and now come to love as a ghost. But he had severed that tie long ago. He didn’t deserve his mother’s love.

And Valjean… he shook his head. It was already mercy that the man didn’t ignore him that day or approached him to remind Javert of every wrong he had done against him. He didn’t deserve Valjean’s goodwill either.

The sun dipped below the river, turning the sky black. Javert closed his eyes and dozed off into a deep sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're done with Thénardier. Javert will see a much nicer face next chapter.
> 
> Thank you for reading! As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.


	4. Montreuil-sur-Mer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert has never learned what it took for Madeleine to have him at Montreuil-sur-Mer.

Javert was back in Montreuil-sur-Mer. He was inside the mairie, floating beside Ma – Valjean – who was poring over a pile of papers on his desk. His younger self was nowhere to be found.

He took the time to really look at the man next to him. This was Jean Valjean at his prime, no longer weighed down by torture at the galleys and still possessing enough vigor to make something of his life. He had a full head of dark brown hair; the curve of his back spoke of strength. There was a sense of peace that pervaded his every movement, like he was grateful to be alive and free. Javert supposed this must be true for Valjean’s entire tenure at Montreuil-sur-Mer. He wondered how much more time this Madeleine had left. The decoration of the room was still sparse, not yet filled with all the medals and honors that various dignitaries had forced upon the mayor as the years went by. It must still be early days for him yet.

Valjean was engrossed in reading some report—Javert found himself searching for the gentle smile that seemed to always be on Madeleine’s lips. It wasn’t there. The content of the document must be serious.

Valjean pondered over what he read before he scribbled a few words on an attached form and signed his name. The report joined a pile of other papers that Valjean had signed. Javert traced his eyes from the pile to the mayor and wondered how he had missed this thoughtful side of Valjean in all their years of acquaintance. His mayoralty may have been a sham, but Madeline wasn’t. He was a capable administrator—Montreuil-sur-Mer flourished under his care just like any garden that Valjean tended to: every plant that Valjean touched always blossomed. It was Javert who brought on winter too early to both the man and the town, frosting over Monsieur Madeleine’s good works and returning the dock town to poverty and unrest. When Javert was transferred to Paris shortly after the Champmathieu incident, the town jail had once again been filled with starving wretches and desperate souls.

Against the backdrop of his roiling mind, their present surrounding was oddly peaceful. Valjean answered several more letters. Javert stood by, guarding over his mayor, the man he had come to truly admire.

He watched as Valjean reached for another envelope. Javert glanced at the seal across the flap—this one was official correspondence from the police. Valjean tried several times at opening the letter before he succeeded; his hands were unusually clumsy for the grace that Monsieur Madeleine normally possessed. Javert could see tension build in those broad shoulders. Ah, of course. As a fugitive from the law, Valjean would always be uneasy with the police. Javert wouldn’t be surprised if Valjean was half expecting the letter to be his arrest warrant exposing his crimes and true identity.

The air around them seemed to chill as Valjean read on, his face growing paler by the second. Then – a gasp: “Javert.”

Javert jumped. Had Valjean spotted him somehow? He moved from his place at Valjean’s right to across the mayor’s desk, where he would be directly in the man’s line of vision. But Valjean’s gaze was fixed on the letter. “Monsieur le Maire?” he called in a tentative voice. No response.

Valjean must be reacting to the letter then. He hovered over bowed head and trembling hands and squinted down at its content: “To the Honorable M. Madeleine, Mayor, M-sur-M: I am pleased to inform you that the Prefecture has appointed a most capable officer in response to your request to fill the vacancy of the post of Inspector at Montreuil-sur-Mer…”

He didn’t need to read the rest of the letter to know what it said, that it was notice of his appointment that brought about the terror in Valjean. Javert wondered how might Valjean’s life have been different if Gisquet had appointed a different inspector. Would Valjean have remained mayor for a long time? Or would he be promoted to an even higher post? Javert knew one thing for certain: without him, there would be no prison in Madeleine’s future.

Valjean was shaking at every limb now, the letter having fallen out of his hands. Despite his fine clothes, Javert swore he was looking at Prisoner 24601, the man who had trained his every instinct to recoil at prison guards. To have one thrust into a forced working relationship with him must have seemed like a cruel joke. It was no small wonder, then, that when Javert first presented himself to the mayor, he was greeted with a smile that he now knew had been genuine. If their places were reversed, Javert wouldn’t be able to do the same.

“I should say no, refuse the appointment…” Valjean whispered to himself. His eyes had acquired a haunted look, as if he had gazed into the letter for good news only to find his inevitable demise staring back at him.

Javert felt his eyes narrow. Yes, appointments must be accepted by the magistrate in power as well. So why didn’t Valjean reject Gisquet’s selection?

A shudder passed through him. Valjean would never know, but whatever compelled him to accept Javert’s appointment was the very decision that had given Javert a future. Prior to Montreuil-sur-Mer, his patron had exhausted almost all of his influence to take Javert out of the bagne and transferred him to the police; he’d work for several years as a gendarme in a town near Toulon with no prospects for advancement. If Valjean had rejected him, Javert would never become inspector. He may even be relieved of his duties, if rumors about that station’s subsequent budgetary woes were to be believed. Javert could very well have fallen back into a life at the gutters.

It seemed he should add yet another thank-you to the mountain of debt he already owed to Jean Valjean.

Minutes or even hours may have passed as both men were lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, Valjean composed himself enough to pick up the dropped letter and fixed his eyes upon the missive. The longer he stared, the more Javert thought he saw resolve winning its struggle against fear, clawing its way into now-determined eyes. He followed Valjean’s gaze to the letter. Valjean was staring at the first paragraph, first line, particularly at four words near the end of the row: “a most capable officer…”

 _Montreuil-sur-Mer needs an excellent inspector like you_ , Javert could almost hear the mayor speaking these exact words to him again, or: _you deserve promotion instead of degradation_ , that incomprehensible praise that Madeleine had heaped upon him—in all his sincerity—when he had begged to be dismissed after having thought he had wrongly accused the mayor.

Duty before self. This had always been Javert’s guiding light. It appeared that, in his own way, Valjean had held himself to this virtue as well.

Javert watched as Valjean composed a short reply (he had to do it three times: the first time his hand shook too much, the second, he had misspelled too many words for the letter to be presentable), thanking the Prefecture and accepting Gisquet’s choice for an inspector. He watched as Madeleine signed his name as if sentencing himself to death. He watched the sealing of the letter. He watched as Valjean slumped into his chair in a daze, face drained of all color and beads of sweat forming on his forehead, his breaths uneven and labored.

Javert placed a hand on Valjean’s shoulder, a futile gesture that neither of them could feel, but a necessary one.

“Thank you, Valjean. I am forever in your debt.”

He kept his hand there until traces of the mayor began to seep back into the convict’s face. As the familiar features of both Prisoner 24601 and Madeleine blended into simply Jean Valjean, Javert thought he had caught a glimpse there of the first signs of an emerging saint.

-

He was inside the parish church, the only place aside from sleep where Javert permitted himself to take pause from enforcing the law. One hour each week, Sunday morning, mass. He had believed it to be his duty to do so.

This was neither the Lord’s day nor daytime. The small church was dark during the evening hours, lit dimly with candles that exuded not enough warmth to dispel the chilled air. The church doors opened, letting in more cold air. Javert didn’t need to turn around to know who had just entered.

“Father,” Valjean’s voice swelled his heart with warmth as he greeted the parish priest.

“Monsieur le Maire, what brings you here?” the priest asked with concern, belying the close relationship Valjean had formed with him as a man of faith who did more than attend mass once a week. Here was a man who knew what was truly important in life. For all his self-justifications— _criminals do not rest on the Sabbath_ and _the Lord is pleased to see his Law upheld_ , etc.—all Javert managed to construct were paper walls that crumbled at the first sound of the trumpet call.

Valjean smiled sadly. “Madeleine, please,” he said, and Javert knew the man would give anything to be able to be honest with the priest. Valjean was here for confession, but no confession he made on this side of paradise would be complete. The slightest mention of _Jean Valjean_ would attract Inspector Javert to his prey like a vulture drawn to the scent of corpses. Surely God must understand Valjean’s need for discretion?

The priest mistook Valjean’s melancholy for the sensitivity of a saint’s soul of even its smallest blot—though this would not be untrue—and led him into the confessional. Javert followed, trailing like a pup tied with a leash to its master. He didn’t want to breach such a private moment, but when he attempted to float in the opposite direction, he couldn’t.

He tried to focus on the ringing of the bells as the clock tower struck eight. But words forced their way into his ears. His new inspector would start in two days, Valjean said, but he could find no charity in his heart to welcome the man. He had tried praying for Javert, but at each attempt, his throat had dried up along with his words. He didn’t think he would be willing to give the inspector a fair chance at establishing himself at Montreuil-sur-Mer. He had been contemplating increasing the pitiful salary for the town’s chief inspector, but upon learning of the Prefecture’s appointment, had decided against doing so. Forgive me, Valjean said over and over, pleading and in anguish.

He had considered relegating oversight of the police to his staff, but that would be evasion of his responsibilities as mayor (forgive me). He should look forward to forging a strong working relationship with the inspector, but that was impossible when his heart already despised the man (forgive me). Why did he despise the inspector? It was just a vague premonition. He hardly knew the man aside from reading his file. Forgive me (for the lies).

As he listened, Javert ceased to be able to meet the mayor’s eyes. He looked to the priest instead, who was performing his rites without a shred of understanding of the true burden behind Valjean’s confessions. Javert scoffed as the priest absolved the mayor of his instinctive reactions rooted in self preservation (surely they weren’t sins?) and assigned meaningless penance that did nothing to calm the terrified convict buried deep inside Madeleine.

If he were to find fault with Valjean, it would be this: the man was utterly blind to his own charity and goodness, virtues he had already extended to Javert the moment he decided to put himself under the scrutiny of a man who once knew his face.

Valjean stayed behind to pray after the priest had excused himself. Javert sat on a pew, humbled and awed, as Valjean slowly found the voice to pray for him. Please protect Javert during his patrols, watch over him as he performs his duty. Please don’t let me get in the way and prevent him from doing what is right. Please bless him, let him be happy in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Please let him stay for as long as you will have him be an inspector here.

Valjean’s lower lip quivered.

“Please… protect me.”

 _From Javert_ , he didn’t say. Perhaps he was too afraid to voice his fears.

Javert buried his face into his hands. Valjean had denied himself on every account to have his inspector here.

He had never felt so unworthy.

-

“Come in!” Valjean said as the door to his office opened, admitting a young gendarme. Martin. He was capable enough, if too easily distracted by the excitement of tavern brawls. Javert inserted himself between the mayor and the boy so he could glare at the latter with dismay. His subordinates were supposed to leave all reporting to the magistrate to him, not bypass his authority to seek out the mayor on their own.

“Ah, Martin, what brings you here?”

Martin gave a stiff salute and proceeded to stand awkwardly before Valjean. “Monsieur le Maire,” he squawked through a constricting throat. His entire body was thrumming with nervousness.

Noticing his discomfort, Valjean indicated for Martin to sit and began plying him with offerings of tea and coffee, neither of which Martin accepted. Even perched upon a chair, Martin appeared as if he would topple over at any second. “Get on with it,” Javert growled, impatient on Valjean’s behalf. M. Madeleine showed no sign of irritation. Instead, concern began to spread across that gentle face as he eyed the gendarme’s head, neck, and hands like a village doctor making an initial assessment of a patient’s state of health. Javert sighed. Even dealing with junior officers, Valjean was the better man.

Eventually, Martin gathered enough courage to speak. “Monsieur le Maire,” he began, gulped, then started again, “Monsieur… I – ah – we, that is, several of us at the police station… we.” He took a deep breath. “InspectorJavertisverydifficulttoworkwith.”

The boy was looking at his hands and completely missed Valjean’s twitch of lips. His shoulders shook in silent laughter as he exerted every bit of control to not laugh aloud. His entire body screamed _I agree_. Javert rolled his eyes as the mayor suddenly entered into a coughing fit. The gendarme looked up, confused. “Pardon me,” Valjean said in between coughs.

“Calm down,” Javert snapped, and though Valjean couldn’t hear him, the words seemed to jolt him out of his sudden hysteria.

Père Madeleine took control of the conversation then, leaning forward to hold Martin’s gaze with gentle yet serious eyes. The boy, sensing the weight of the mayor’s attention, shifted in his chair, appearing like an errant child about to receive chastisement. For all that Martin and the other gendarmes worshipped the mayor, none of them truly knew him. If Valjean would not even raise his voice at the traitor that Javert was after he had admitted to denouncing him to the Prefecture, then the boy was in no danger of being spoken to harshly.

Javert shifted his focus to Valjean. _No one understands you, Monsieur. Least of all me._ With secrets to keep and a high position to uphold, Valjean must have been a very lonely man. He heard gentle words coming from the mouth of the mayor, not paying close attention to what he was reassuring Martin with. Instead, Javert thought about how Valjean had to fight against his own instincts for almost three years, sharing governance of his city with an enemy, defending him against a townful of people who would turn up their nose at the slightest mention of Inspector Javert.

“…knows what he is doing and I am confident in his impeccable service to the police. Give him some time to adjust to his post,” Valjean said, concluding with the offer that Martin and his colleagues should always feel welcome to approach him if they experienced further difficulties with Inspector Javert.

It wasn’t until Martin had left the mayor’s office did Valjean allow his frown to surface. Javert could see etched in every line of that weary face the one question that must haunt him often: _Have I made a mistake by accepting Javert to come to Montreuil-sur-Mer?_

Martin’s visit had provided Madeleine with the opportunity to be rid of Inspector Javert. He could inform the Prefecture of the junior officers’ complaints. The Prefecture would be obligated to conduct an inquiry, and even though Javert knew they would not find any fault with him, the shame of the process would compel him to seek transfer to another town, perhaps back to the station house in Toulon. Madeleine knew this. Jean Valjean knew this. And Prisoner 24601 would rejoice over this chance to free himself from Javert once and for all.

But Valjean shook his head, took out his rosary, and knelt down near where Javert was standing. “Lord have mercy,” he sighed, then proceeded to recite his prayers.

Javert turned away. “Why do you always choose mercy over justice, Valjean?” he whispered, a question more to himself than to the mayor.

Valjean’s voice filled the room. His prayers soothed Javert’s heart. As if drawn by an invisible hand, Javert knelt down beside him.

He didn’t know what to pray for, so he closed his eyes and listened. Moments later, the world went black.

-

Javert was back at the Seine. Back to immobility. Back to being alone.

He looked toward heaven’s glowing doorway. Valjean was in there, he thought longingly, and didn’t know how to deal with the sudden lurching of his heart.

It was the first time he truly yearned to be granted entry inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
> 
> I had planned to post this chapter earlier but got delayed when the idea for [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1742567) bit me. It's a short piece to commemorate a certain June 4 anniversary. No overt political endorsement, just some mild allusions.


	5. To love a man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert comes to several realizations where Jean Valjean is concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second flashback scene in this chapter contains a hint of blink-and-you'll-miss-it adult content. It's non-explicit and brief. But I thought I'd give a heads up in case some of you would like to skip the (very short) scene.

For months afterwards, Javert couldn’t sleep. He had tried—God knows he did—for returning to his dreams meant mobility and freedom. And, his mind added, a return to Valjean. This impossible man who had haunted his life and now his death, whom Javert looked forward to meeting in his sleep and (if he dared to hope) in paradise one day, was utterly out of reach during waking hours. But the harder Javert tried, the less he was able to drift into oblivion. And so he resigned himself to remaining at the Seine, and he stood guard over first winter and spring, then summer and autumn before the river’s surface froze into ice again.

An old man was on his way into paradise when he squinted at him, paused, then squinted some more. A smile broke free on his face as he approached Javert to enfold him into a hearty embrace.

“Inspector Javert!”

“Monsieur Gillenormand,” Javert greeted.

Even in death, this century-old man was full of vigor, his mind as sharp as a rapier. He shook Javert’s hand almost violently after releasing him from the embrace. “I never properly thanked you for saving Marius! Do not think you can fool me, Inspector, I knew it was you who brought him home after the foolish boy almost got himself killed at the barricades. I had intended to call the police station, so imagine my surprise when I read of your death in the newspaper! My condolences. Ah, but that is no longer of any importance. We have both passed on. Say, are you waiting for a loved one before entering the beyond?”

Javert had always loathed this part of the conversation, whether with Valjean or Thénardier, and now with Monsieur Gillenormand. To conceal his unease, he dipped his head into a bow before answering with measured words.

“Unfortunately, Monsieur, my demise had confined me to the Seine. I do, however, hope to one day cross into the beyond –” He found himself truly meaning this, this hope that he could no longer suppress. “– but for the present, I must endure my lot until mobility is granted me.”

Monsieur Gillenormand nodded, half comprehending. “Ah, I see. You still intend to enter in, very good, very good. Don’t linger too long, my boy, you do not want to vex those who are waiting for you in there.” The gentleman gestured toward the glowing light, and Javert did not point out that no one would be waiting for him on the other side. “Although who am I to say? I will be waiting as well, for my dear boy Marius. But oh, I want him to have a long life! So I shall be patient and hope he doesn’t turn up for a very long time. Yes, yes, I will wait. It doesn’t matter how long I’ll need to hover about the doorway. And perhaps, my lad, I will see you enter before my Marius arrives, I hope?”

Monsieur Gillenormand winked a twinkling eye at Javert, grabbed his hand to shake it up and down for some final seconds, and excused himself to enter into paradise.

That evening, Javert sat afloat the Seine as he pondered the old gentleman’s certainty that his beloved grandson would one day arrive. How could anyone be so sure of another person’s eternal destination?

His eyelids grew heavy at the thought, and he drifted into sleep.

-

Javert—both of them—were at Montreuil-sur-Mer’s newly built hospital, financed by the generosity of one M. Madeleine. His present self was floating halfway between the floor and the ceiling, looking down at his young counterpart, bandaged and coalescing from a particularly violent encounter with a gang of bandits.

The sisters bustled about, tending to him while hurrying into another room to see other patients, including several of his colleagues who had sustained lesser injuries. Javert touched a hand to his shoulder, feeling through his clothes for the scar of a bullet wound that had almost rendered his left arm crippled. His only consolation was that the bandits were captured three months later. Cuffing the lot of them had been especially satisfying.

The sisters paused their work when a man loomed in the doorway.

“Père Madeleine,” they said.

Jean Valjean smiled. Javert recalled his fondness for being greeted in this particular name. Most had ceased to do so after he was appointed mayor.

“How is he?” Valjean asked, and everybody, including Javert, knew the mayor was asking after the inspector.

Sister Simplice’s brows creased as she wrung her hands. “Inspector Javert is no longer in any danger, we have closed his wounds and controlled his fever. However, he remains unconscious.”

Valjean frowned. But to the sisters, he forced a smile and nodded in thanks. “I desire to spend a moment with the inspector. There is food in the kitchen. I can ask Simone to bring more if you need.”

“Thank you, Monsieur,” the sisters said and took their leave.

Javert watched as Valjean approached his younger self and sat down on the chair beside the bed. Free from Inspector Javert’s constant scrutiny, Valjean appeared less guarded, and Javert was surprised to see the mayor direct sincere concern toward himself. He had long come to realize that Madeleine’s kindness was a real part of Valjean, but to see it lavished on his younger self—still Valjean’s enemy—was… humbling.

Valjean raised a hand to brush away a tuft of hair that had fallen over his eye, and Javert thought he felt an echoing sensation tingling over his brow.

For the next hour, Valjean prayed. He started with familiar recitations, then to supplications on behalf of the well being of the city, and eventually to the injured inspector. As he did so, Valjean returned his rosary to his pocket and instead took Javert’s hand into his. He fixed his gaze on Javert’s closed eyes as words flowed from his mouth.

“You promised to keep him safe. Will you turn back on your promises? I will not be able to bear the thought of having brought him here only to have him killed or maimed. No, I wish for him to heal, to be whole. He… he is a good man.” Madeleine sighed. “Perhaps I still harbor sin in my heart and thus my supplication was rendered impure. Forgive me, Lord. I… sometimes I look at him and see the Javert I used to know. He still haunts my dreams. He suspects me even now, I am sure of it.

“But as mayor, Javert has treated me with nothing but respect. He is capable, he is dedicated. And I… no, I refuse to wish him harm. Please heal him. Please keep him safe…”

His younger self heard none of these words. He would return to work a week later, intent on capturing the bandits and intent also on uncovering secrets that he was sure M. Madeleine was hiding. He would never know that Jean Valjean had sat by his bedside, had tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear, had prayed for him, had held his hand and beheld his face.

Javert floated down to settle himself beside Valjean. He wrapped an arm over Valjean’s shoulder, careful not to pass his insubstantial form through the mayor’s solid one.

Valjean squeezed Inspector Javert’s hand and held it tighter. In his mind, Javert pretended to pull him closer.

-

Javert next found himself in a room. It was a bedroom inside a private residence. The room was sparsely furnished, simple but orderly. Why was he here?

There was a man in the bed.

His eyes widened.

Valjean was…

Oh, _oh_.

He thought saints didn’t touch themselves.

Javert gulped, cursing his inability to escape from Valjean’s bedroom. Shouldn’t ghosts be able to go through walls? Why was he prevented from nearing any form of egress and pulled back into the center of the room each time he tried to lunge at a door or a window, like he was tied to a string that was being anchored by Valjean?

Javert felt his ears burn, more at the shame of gaping and keeping his eyes fixed at Valjean than at the thought of actually witnessing the act itself. It was commonplace for prisoners at the bagne to take care of their needs quickly before the offending appendage might catch the notice of others and they would have their safety endangered. Jean Valjean had been a convict. He would do this quietly and keep it short.

And indeed, there was nothing beyond the perfunctory rubbing of hand against flesh, the almost violent tugging and pulling that made the act more an annoyance to be dealt with than an indulgence to be enjoyed. Javert found that if he breathed loudly, he could block out the sounds. But he couldn’t turn away.

Valjean quickened his pace; he was close. Moments later, a hitched intake of breath signaled that he had finished.

Valjean sighed and cleaned himself with his handkerchief, rising from his bed to get dressed. Javert tore his eyes away from the exposed flesh only to be held captive anew by flushed cheeks. He should leave Valjean alone to put on his costume for mayor. And yet he stared on, looking at Jean Valjean as if meeting him for the first time.

Jean Valjean was a man.

A man made of flesh and blood; a man with normal needs.

He wondered why he had never realized this before.

-

Javert was inside Madeleine’s factory. It was nighttime and Valjean had sent all the workers home—though he himself remained, hidden away in his office and buried under piles upon piles of business correspondence. Javert frowned. Valjean was not one to know the meaning of “stop.” He would work through the night simply because the idea of portioning his work hadn’t occurred to him.

“You idiot,” Javert chided, in a tone that sounded far too affectionate to his own ears. By God, death had addled his mind.

He floated down the stairs and into the factory’s workroom, glad for the large hall’s emptiness. He went to a window. The sky was cloudy this night, and the single candle flame from Valjean’s office was blocked by the stairway. There was a strange sense of peace here. The very air that Javert’s semi-substantial lungs breathed in seemed to possess the ability to heal, containing at once the harshness of medicinal salt for scrubbing away shame and the most soothing balm to coat the heart with assurances of a better future. It was as if the factory had taken on the personality of its owner, so that each desperate soul who found employment here would be granted welcome and the opportunity to earn an honest living. He knew this factory would not stand forever—no thanks to himself—but for the moment it sustained the lives of many citizens.

How wrong he had been in life, when he had believed the mayor to run the factory as yet another ploy to conceal his true identity and not as the truest form of charity it was meant to extend—one of dignity and self-sufficiency!

Though admittedly, he had been blind to many things where Jean Valjean was concerned. Such as his newfound discovery that he was a warm-blooded man just like himself. This thought set his cheeks aflame, and he was glad of the complete darkness to conceal it. Valjean had performed the act no more differently than how Javert had taken care of his own moments of need in life, as a task of necessity done with a single-minded determination to not think about anything one would normally associate with the pleasures of the flesh. And yet precisely because Valjean was so composed even in satisfying his baser nature, Javert had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

He forced what scant saliva he could gather down his throat as his mind spun in search of something different to ponder. Valjean and his prayers. No. Valjean by the Inspector’s bedside, holding his hand. No. Valjean with him at the Seine, trying to pull him free, sharing a sunset with him… _No!_

What had Valjean done to him?

Kindness and acceptance. Moments of dignity that made him forget the shame of his eternal condemnation. New understanding about both the man and himself. And—he thought back to Valjean’s certainty that heaven would one day welcome him as well—tendrils of hope that had managed to take root in a withered heart and slowly bring it back to life.

Javert glanced up at where the factory’s office was hidden from his sight. Valjean had managed all this by merely being himself.

Was it possible to grow fond of someone without interacting with him, just by observing his past?

The singular thought of Jean Valjean took siege in his mind for hours. The night was still deep when Javert heard a strange clicking sound from the factory’s door. Instinct snapped his body upright and he flew to the entryway. There was that clicking noise again, this time followed by an experimental downward tug at the door’s handle.

Someone was trying to break in.

“Halt, police!” Javert screamed, though he knew it was useless. But he had to try. Valjean was alone in his factory. If the intruder was armed, who would come to the mayor’s rescue at this hour of night? His younger self had not interfered in this incident—he had no recollection of it—and while he knew Valjean didn’t die by the hands of criminals, he wasn’t so sure if what he feared wouldn’t happen simply because his presence here had somehow altered the course of history.

The intruder ignored what he couldn’t hear and, after working at the door for another minute, succeeded in gaining entry as he slipped soundlessly inside the factory. He was a young man no older than thirty, all long limbs and a slight body that made him look more awkward than dangerous. The clouds had chosen this moment to part and moonlight flooded through the windows into the room. Javert floated toward the intruder; he didn’t recognize this face, which meant this night’s incident had never been brought to the police.

The man had a satchel with him. He made for the back of the room, where shelves held raw materials to be welded and shaped into beads, and began stuffing the sack with unshined stones and glass. His hands were quick and his selections sure. Javert growled. This man was one of the factory’s workers; Valjean had let in a thief.

Javert pondered what he could do and came to the sad conclusion of nothing. He tried to grab the intruder by the shoulder, only to have his hand pass through the man’s body. “Madeleine!” he yelled, though he didn’t know why he would want to alarm Valjean and put him in danger of a possibly armed man. It mattered not anyway; the silence around him was louder than his scream. He memorized the young man’s face—for what purpose, he didn’t know. Perhaps in the unlikely event that he would one day meet this man at the Seine, he would like to give him a sound box across the ear. Though even in this, there was the slight problem of his immobility and general inability to interact with most souls who passed through.

His focus was so fixed on the intruder that he startled almost as much as the young man did at what followed.

“I think, Jacques, that you don’t really want to do this.” A soft plea, but it was louder than any angry bellow, more piercing than any accusation.

A choked gasp escaped from Jacques. Both he and Javert turned around to find the mayor standing by the door, rifle in hand, blocking the intruder’s exit.

All of Montreuil-sur-Mer knew about the mayor’s excellent marksmanship.

A violent shaking fit seized Jacques. His eyes darted from the mayor’s face (he couldn’t quite meet those eyes) to his rifle. “Y-You won’t shoot,” he stammered, more to convince himself than to address Madeleine. His satchel slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor with a loud thud.

Valjean took pity on Jacques. He set his rifle aside, propping it against the wall. “No, I suppose not. I will only if I have no other option. Will you grant me other options?”

Jacques stared, confused and uncomprehending.

Valjean simply waited, and Javert could barely hold back a bark of laughter. He’d been the recipient of Saint Valjean’s ever-patient gaze more times than he cared to count. He had never managed to outstare Valjean (that time at the Seine was a draw), though he usually lasted long enough to retain what pride he could hold onto. This boy wouldn’t last a minute.

As predicted, within seconds, something seemed to have snapped inside Jacques and he crumbled to the floor.

“I didn’t mean it!” he protested, his eyes scrambling about for a way of escape. He would need to break panes of glass to flee through a window. There was a back door, but Valjean could easily overtake him if both made to run toward the other end of the factory. “I – I…”

Valjean shook his head and sighed. “Do you, Jacques? To have broken in and approached the shelves as if you had planned this for days? I quite believe that you do mean it.”

Javert furrowed his brows. What was Valjean, who was usually so quick to forgive, trying to get at?

“What have you taken, in the bag?” Valjean asked.

Jacques remained silent.

Valjean sighed again and walked toward the young man. He approached carefully, like a tamer would a lion, but his steps were steady and he carried himself in such a way that broached no disagreement as to who was in control of the current situation. If Javert hadn’t known Valjean to be the very definition of mercy, he would believe Valjean to be toying with Jacques, falsely lowering his guard before striking with anger and condemnation. As it was, Valjean’s calmness was merely unsettling as Javert still feared for his safety should the thief become so overwhelmed with shame that he would attack on impulse. But Jacques seemed to have caved into himself, paying no heed to Valjean bending to take the sack into his hands, his eyes squeezed shut as if he were willing himself to wake from a bad dream.

“Jacques.”

The young man buried his head between his knees.

“Jacques!” Madeleine ordered.

The young man lifted his head, obeying out of instinct. But the sight of Monsieur le Maire was too terrifying to behold and so he froze, caught between wanting to back away and not being able to move a single muscle to flee from the mayor’s presence. Javert knew this look well, the suspended moment in time when a criminal’s fear was realized as Javert would cuff those wrists. But Valjean wasn’t here to arrest, had no intention to accuse. Instead, he crouched down before the thief so they were at eye level with one another.

“Jacques, you work here and know the manufacturing process. If I were to make beads only out of the contents of your bag, how many of them do you think I can produce?”

Jacques only looked more terrified at suddenly being so close to the mayor.

“Come, let us try and see,” Valjean said as he fumbled through the bag. “Ah, you have taken beads and glass in equal measure, good, good. There seems to be forty, fifty unrefined beads in here? Let’s suppose we have fifty. That makes five rosaries, does it not?”

Jacques stared at Valjean, momentarily forgetting his terror. Javert, too, was confused.

“… yes?”

“Good. Now, I know you are a skilled craftsman. Doubtless you will make these into excellent rosaries. Some might even be willing to pay ten francs for each of them. So you now have fifty francs. What will you do with the money?”

“I… please, Monsieur, I won’t, I’m sorry –”

Valjean placed a hand on the young man’s arm gently. “No Jacques, we shall discuss your penance later. But first tell me, why this?” He pointed to the satchel. “Why risk your future for fifty francs?”

In a different life, Javert would have scoffed at Valjean. He’d heard every excuse under the sun. Starving child, sick parent, hungry mouths to feed. Nothing that the thief said would be new. And yet this time, Javert found himself willing to listen, if only to satisfy his curiosity of how Valjean planned to resolve this matter.

Jacques stared at the floor as he mumbled: “My baby sister fell sick. She needs a doctor.”

Concern flashed in Valjean’s eyes, the irrational display of genuine concern by a factory owner over a worker who had just openly attempted to rob him. Once, Javert would have thought this proof of Valjean’s continued depravity, the blatant condoning of theft by a thief. But now, he realized that mercy had stilled Jacques’ hands better than any manacles would.

“Have you brought her to the hospital?” Valjean asked, “Perhaps Sister Simplice can look after her.”

Jacques let out a wail. “If only it were this simple, Monsieur! My sister was taken by a violent seizure and foamed at the mouth. We don’t know what’s wrong, but there is this doctor in Paris. Étienne spoke well of him, he is our only hope. But it is expensive to call a doctor from Paris. I mean to go to him, to take my sister…”

Valjean was silent for a moment. Then, as if he had come to a decision, he reached into his pocket and took out a bank note. “Here, take this for your sister. If the doctor in Paris demands more, tell him you will send him the rest of the payment posthaste.”

When Jacques made no move to take the bank note but stared dumbly at it as if it were a trick being played on him, Valjean stuffed the note into his hand. He then waited until the young man met his gaze.

“Now, Jacques, I believe we still have the matter of your –” He waved a hand at the fallen satchel. “– action to discuss.”

At this, Jacques stiffened and what little color had returned was now drained completely from his face. “Monsieur, oh, Monsieur! Please don’t turn me to the police. Please, anything but that. I cannot go to prison. My family will starve!”

Valjean did not answer right away. The pained look in his eyes had told Javert, who was witnessing the spectacle before him with great unease, everything that he needed to know. Valjean was seeing himself in Jacques, and Javert suddenly wished there could have been a Monsieur Madeleine there for the young Jean Valjean. Jacques hadn’t realized it yet, but Valjean would not turn him to the police. Javert knew this not only in the absence of a report filed with the police the next day, but in the way Valjean beheld the young man, with barely veiled sadness that told Javert of the anguish he was feeling on behalf of Jacques.

“What should I do instead?”

The question took the young man by surprise. Clearly, he had not expected to be asked to determine his own fate. His eyes trailed again to Valjean’s rifle and then to the door, his first two unsavory options: to be shot or turned over to the police. He then looked at his hand in wonder, as if he had just discovered the bank note there. He gasped, the searing pain of charity upon a guilty soul, and doubled over at the realization of the ticket of life that his sister had just been given. The tears broke free then, sobs that soaked his shirt and racked his heaving chest, and for the better part of the next hour, the only anchor that seemed to ground the young man was Valjean’s hand on his shoulder.

Javert’s eyes never left Valjean. Tears had gathered in those kind eyes, and even in the dimness of the moonlight, he could see the lines on Valjean’s face. Many of them told of a harsh childhood and immense suffering at the galleys. He wondered what Valjean would look like if he had been spared Toulon. Did he truly deserve the bagne, even its initial five years, for a single loaf of bread?

It was useless to dwell on what could not be changed. But here, with this young man, Valjean had the opportunity to offer him a different path.

Javert could not muster any indignation at Valjean’s supposed disregard for the law.

When Jacques finally calmed enough to speak, his eyes had dulled and his voice was equally as leaden. “I do deserve to be taken to the police,” he said without emotion, but then something like desperation sparked in his eyes. “Oh Monsieur, I beg you to give me three days to accompany my sister to Paris to see the doctor. Then I will return, I promise! And I will follow you to the police. I give you my word.”

Three days. Valjean had once asked Javert for three days, and he had sneered and believed the convict to be deceitful. He turned his head away, no longer able to look at Valjean. This request, the begging of more time to go retrieve Fantine’s daughter, had not yet happened for this Jean Valjean. He would one day make the same request of his younger self just as Jacques now asked it of the mayor, and there was not a single thing Javert could do to change the outcome of this looming event that was both in Valjean’s future and in Javert’s past.

Monsieur Madeleine’s voice drifted past Javert’s jumbled thoughts. “Three days it is then. I will ask the foreman to bring in a temporary worker in your absence. I will pay extra for the new worker without stopping your wages. Should you need to spend more time in Paris, do so. I would rather you return to work with a healthy sister than with a heavy heart.”

Jacques raised an incredulous face to the mayor even as Javert did the same. Had Valjean just offered to dispatch the young man on a paid duty?

“Monsieur, have you misheard? Or perhaps I had not been clear? I – I stole from you. I am a thief. I should be turned to the police, not returned to work! You required nothing when you hired me, only that I be an honest man. As you can see, I am not! I have squandered your trust. I must be punished. I’m sorry, Monsieur. I’m so sorry…”

Inspector Javert of Montreuil-sur-Mer would have agreed with Jacques’ every word. But all Javert could think of was a loaf of bread in place of a satchel and an equally desperate face of a young man from Faverolles instead of Jacques’. Had Valjean begged for mercy? Did the officer who apprehended him spare a thought to Valjean’s starving family? Did anyone truly know what sentencing petty criminals to Toulon really meant?

Valjean tightened his grip on Jacques’ shoulder. “If I send you to prison, then what will become of you? To your family? You may believe it is just to be imprisoned, and perhaps you are correct. But what will happen to you after you are released? Will you be able to find employment? Even if you do, will you be fairly paid? No, I will not turn you to the police. You have aborted your attempt and the items are still within my factory. I do not consider this theft.

“And as for your employment, how will you support your family if I relieve one of my best craftsmen of his duty? Yes, you can become a dock worker, but will you earn enough? Pride may prevent you from falling into crime for yourself, but what will you do when your sister looks up at you with hunger in her eyes? And if you break the law on account of my dismissal, then the fault will be mine! Jacques, listen to me. I greatly desire for you to return to work after you deal with the matter of your sister. There is no shame in admitting your error of judgment tonight, and you have already done so. And now, take the bank note and return home. We shall never speak of this again.”

Javert watched as Jacques mutely nodded and left the factory, still awed and in a stupor as if he had been in a dream all this time. Day was about to break. Javert could make out the beginning of dawn as the windows were letting in more light. Valjean took the satchel and returned the stolen items to the shelves. Every lifting of his arm and bending of his back screamed of exhaustion. Valjean’s eyes were red-rimmed. Javert didn’t know if it was from weariness or from the tears he finally dared to let fall. When Valjean had set everything back to its proper place, not a trace of what had passed during the night remained.

Valjean headed home for an hour’s rest. With a strange swelling in his heart, Javert loomed over his convict, his mayor, his impossible saint, keeping watch over the sleeping man the best he could. He let the sight of Jean Valjean fill him with warmth.

Could he come to love a person merely by observing him?

He already had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story grew on me over the weekend. It will now be 7 chapters, which means more Jean Valjean/Javert interactions. Yay!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts -- I truly appreciate all your encouragements so far :-)


	6. A Long Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can Javert dare to hope that his confinement to the Seine is not forever?

When Javert returned to the Seine, he couldn’t fall asleep again. At first he thought it was part of a larger cycle, that if he would wait for several months or seasons, sleep would come to him just as it previously did after intervals of wakefulness. But six months passed, a year, then two years, and he was left floating above the Seine, helpless to force even a trace of sleepiness into his eyes.

Paris’ streets grew restless. One passing soul that he recognized—a former junior officer who became a Chief Inspector, awarded a Legion of Honor posthumously when he died in the line of duty (he had stayed behind to watch his own medal ceremony)—stopped and explained to Javert about Louis-Napoleon’s failed coup attempts and how the unrest had spread to Paris. It was 1840. He’d been dead for eight years.

As time stretched into an endless canvas, the memory of his encounters with Valjean stuck to his mind like vivid blotches of paint that refused to fade with time. Those were the only instances of bright colors among Javert’s miserable scroll of dull existence, and he found his mind returning to Valjean’s smiles, Valjean’s hand (holding his), Valjean’s eyes (he wished he’d taken the opportunity to behold them more) over and over again. Sometimes he’d beg heaven to hear him and grant him sleep. Other times, he’d curse what Providence that still guided his half-life for bringing him to a point where he had become attached to (fond of, fallen for, _loved_ ) someone only to then cut him off from further glimpses of that someone. He harbored no illusions. Valjean was not his. But he was the closest Javert had come to have as an advocate on his behalf, someone who, despite it all, had always wished good things for him. He had failed to do the same for Valjean in life, and now that he desired to do good for the man in return, he was utterly powerless to do so.

(Not that Valjean needed him. He was in heaven. He was happy. He had no need for Javert.)

He ceased to take any interest in the life happening around him. He didn’t spare a glance at the commotion in the streets of Paris as the city became the center of regime changes, cycling through kings and emperors and _républiques_ in quick succession. Though aware that at some point Paris had come under siege of the Prussians, he didn’t ask any passing souls whether they were French or German. He did, however, take an unusual interest in the news that a Commune had formed in Paris and that each arrondissement was given the power to elect its own mayor. “A pity,” one soul had heard Javert muttering to himself at the news of the election, as if he would be the first to nominate a candidate if given the opportunity to do so.

Days blended into months and into years, and Javert stood, the sole ghost upon the Seine, seeing the rapid turnabout of faces who one day commanded solid bodies and the next moment became semi-substantial forms shepherded into heaven’s gate.

Occasionally, the eyes of the newly deceased would catch his and Javert would incline his head in acknowledgement. These souls who elicited such a response from Javert would inevitably all arrive at the same conclusion: the Guardian of the Seine was utterly dejected. Most thought him to be a jilted lover who had jumped for love. Even as this could not have been farther from the truth, Javert did appear to be lovelorn, despite his inability to put a name to the turmoil he was feeling inside.

Yet Inspector Javert was nothing if not resolute, and so he continued to stand guard over the Seine, seeing though not perceiving, and kept his head held high.

-

One day, Javert saw something that he had never witnessed before: the heavenly portal dimmed for the briefest of moments before a figure floated not into, but exited out from paradise. The figure glowed as if he had been enraptured in heaven’s light, the radiance only diminishing as distance stretched further between the floating form and heaven’s door.

The figure was floating toward him.

“Hello Javert,” Jean Valjean greeted.

Javert stared.

He could see Valjean, all of him, in this angelic man who looked both familiar and like someone he was meeting for the first time. Valjean was smiling—the smile was definitely Madeleine’s. The dark brown hair tousled by the river wind, Jean of Faverolles’. The broad shoulders and strong arms reminded Javert uncomfortably of what he had seen on Prisoner 24601, but Toulon had faded away like a forgotten dream and what emerged from that dark phase of Valjean’s life was his humility, a black charcoal thrown into the furnace of the bagne that life eventually refined into a shining diamond. The diamond had been veiled inside an old man’s body under the false name of Ultime Fauchelevent. But now, with this wise old soul having found a home in an immortal body, Jean Valjean was brilliant to behold, both inside and out.

Javert didn’t dare touch him, for fear that the hand he reached out would go through Valjean just like it did in his dreams. He didn’t even want to return the man’s greeting and risk waking himself. If this was a vision driven by his descent into madness, then he would rather dwell on his delusion than regain his sanity and lose Valjean.

Valjean continued to talk as if he weren’t being gaped at. “We can come out at any time. There are no restrictions.”

 _So why haven't you come out sooner?_ Javert almost asked, before he had the presence of mind to hold his tongue. His… longing for Valjean was one-sided, he reminded himself. To Valjean, he was no more than an enemy who turned into an odd sort of acquaintance, not a friend to be missed or visited. He should be grateful that the man was here at all.

Javert composed himself and bowed. “May I inquire as to the purpose of your visit, Monsieur?” he asked, keeping his voice respectful. It wasn’t so hard to revert back to the subordinate addressing Monsieur le Maire, especially now that Valjean was bathed in heaven’s light, better than the near-perfect mayor from many moons ago. For all he knew, Valjean had become an Angel of Light.

“Javert?” The voice was uncertain, surprised. Was the man expecting Javert to snarl at him, to denounce him? Javert had done that in life and he had been wrong. There were even fewer reasons to claim familiarity with such a saint now. “Javert? Do you not recognize me? I am Jean Valjean. Have you forgotten?”

A hand came under his chin to raise up his lowered head. Javert shuddered at the contact, the pressing of sunlight against winter’s ice. Valjean was too focused on examining his sanity to notice Javert’s hands balling into fists at his sides. It was a vain attempt at regaining control. The touch had already melted away every last trace of Javert’s resolve.

He leant into Valjean’s hand. The part of his mind that still possessed coherent thought accused him of being no different than a tamed beast, but that voice was weakening by the second as Javert breathed in the scent of goodness and light that defined Jean Valjean. It took him a moment to notice that concerned eyes had joined the hand in its torturous hold of Javert’s face. There was a hint of panic there, Javert noted, as if Valjean was about to invoke heaven and demand it to tend to the very soul it had rejected.

He sighed, the forcing of air through his dry throat. “I am fine, Valjean.”

Knitted brows and downturned lips loosened into a smile. Javert drank in the relief directed his way, barely noticing the loss of warmth on his chin as Valjean removed his hand. But this smile was different. Javert could sense hesitance, fear, and even a trace of regret.

“I should have come out sooner. It’s… well, once inside, it’s difficult to want to leave,” Valjean said, apology in every word. “I see you often from heaven’s door, you seem well. I know now I shouldn’t have presumed. You must be lonely.”

“I manage,” Javert said, the closest he would come to admit to something as shameful as loneliness. “I count the number of souls who pass by. The unrest among Paris’ streets keeps my thoughts occupied. And at one point, I had been able to sleep.”

“Ah yes, you did sleep, and time passes quicker when you slumber.”

 _I watch you when you sleep_ , Javert heard.

“What do you dream of?”

 _You_ , Javert wanted to say, but this truth burned at his throat and he could not force the word out.

“I’m taken back through time, to relive moments of my life,” he said instead. This was also true. “I’m shown my failures and the many things I was blind to in life. I see you, Monsieur. You are in my dreams, for I have failed you often. I was harsh, I failed to do good. I wronged you at every turn even though you extended nothing but kindness to me. You gave me the opportunity to become inspector at Montreuil-sur-Mer. You defended me. But I treated you with mistrust and contempt. Worse, I had denounced you. My sins against you were endless, and none more so than how I had repaid you, with nothing but a desire to see you destroyed in spite of your goodness.”

Javert stood with his back straight as he spoke, like the day he approached the mayor to beg for his dismissal. Things weren’t so dissimilar now. He was begging still, this time for Valjean to despise him, to realize that not every soul could be saved. Valjean should return to paradise and never come out again. It would be right; it would be his just payment. The thought pained him—that inexplicable lurching of his heart was now accompanied by a twisting sensation from deep within his soul—but he could no more take back his lifetime of sins than he could now turn his eyes from Valjean. And so he ignored the emotions that he couldn’t understand and waited for the man who had occupied his dreams to turn away in disgust.

But just like that day at the mairie, Valjean rejected his petition. Javert knew this the instant he sensed compassion directed his way. He could not bring himself to refuse this compassion—his soul was drinking up every drop as if it were a long-denied fountain—and so he resigned to being pulled more toward Valjean, to wish for the man to never leave even as he tried to will his tongue to beg Valjean to go away.

Valjean’s lips curved, this time into that familiar smile full of understanding and certainty in all men’s goodness. “Repentance is a long journey, Javert. There is no shame in that,” Saint Madeleine said. He left no room for Javert to argue, and so he didn’t. “You believe yourself to be beyond redemption, but I see a man intent on making reparation for every wrong he has committed. And what about the good you have done? Are you so blind to your own worth?”

Javert laughed, a hoarse and hysterical sound to his own ears. “What imaginary good you think I have done won’t help me. I’ve condemned myself decades ago when I said yes to accept my judgment, I said yes even when I knew my sentence would be eternal. There is nothing in me that merits entry into heaven –”

“Don’t say that!” Valjean cut him off, a sharp rebuke, and Javert wondered what Valjean saw in him to warrant such a vehement reply. “You’re a just man, patient in your own way, willing to admit your faults and always striving to be better. You never once complained about having to spend your days just out of reach of your true home. You stand guard over the Seine, and I know wherever you go visit in your dreams, you’ve been guarding over me as well.

“I’ve been observing you all this time because I can, because I wanted to be certain you are well. And you’ve managed admirably. When you were being assaulted by Thénardier, all those taunts… you took them in stride. I know how difficult it is.”

Javert pushed away an uneasy memory. Yes, he supposed someone who had spent nineteen years at the bagne would know how being the recipient of insults felt.

Valjean forged on, not giving him time to fall into regret. “Your judgment is not forever.”

Javert scoffed. “You and I both know I’ve committed a mortal sin.”

“Yes. But you’ve also had plenty of time to repent. And you have.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Valjean smiled, the confident smile of a child about to tell his parents that unicorns were real. He flicked his eyes up toward Javert’s head.

“Your hat.”

“My hat?”

“The hat you’re wearing on your head.”

“Yes, I’m wearing a hat,” Javert snapped. “I’ve always had a hat.”

Valjean’s smile was a full grin now. “Have you never wondered why? You weren’t wearing one when you jumped.”

No, he wasn’t…. Not caring why Valjean knew about the circumstances surrounding his demise, Javert reached up a hand to take down the object in question. It was in the shape of the hat he’d worn in life, same weight and perhaps even the same fabric. It had felt no different on his head all these years.

But this hat was red.

“A red hat, Javert.” Valjean prompted. “Remember Toulon?”

In Toulon, prisoners sentenced to life wore green caps. Those with the prospects of release were given red caps.

Belatedly, Javert recalled that when he encountered Thénardier, he had noted the ghost to have acquired a green cap. If that ill-fitting cap signified Thénardier’s eternal damnation, then –

“H-How long will it be?”

“I don’t know,” Valjean admitted. “But I suppose as long as it takes until you are ready.”

“I do want to go in –”

“You want to not be here. I’ve known that since the first time I saw you after our deaths. But to enter, you must stop punishing yourself.”

Javert didn’t know how to respond. He was under a just punishment, sentenced to his current estate by that mysterious man who didn’t show him compassion. He didn’t ask for mercy that day, didn’t believe he deserved it. The mysterious man seemed to have agreed. Was he wrong to have accepted his judgment without pleading for something more?

“God is never wrong, Javert. Your hat is red. The day will come…”

Valjean was close and Valjean was warm. Valjean’s words were soothing. When the world swirled around him, Valjean was his anchor before everything faded into darkness.

-

“Come in!” a voice on the other side of the door called and Javert entered, trailing behind a newly paroled Jean Valjean who had met rejection after rejection until a lady directed him to knock on the Bishop’s door. Javert laid eyes on the Bishop— _the_ Bishop, finally—and knew instantly that if any man could burn away the darkness inside Valjean and present him to the light, it would be he.

Javert listened as Valjean recounted his entire past to the kind man, all the while believing him to be a mere parish priest. He wondered how much self-awareness this Valjean possessed when he admitted to being a dangerous man. Valjean’s face betrayed his every emotion: surprise at not being turned away, confusion at being invited to sit at the table, hunger as he eyed the food being offered to him, and a perpetual dazed expression as if he half-believed he would wake at any moment and find himself back at the bagne. Javert searched for any hint of gratefulness. There was none.

The Bishop welcomed Valjean as an honored guest, as a brother. The Bishop fed him and offered him a comfortable bed. Before the Bishop retired for the night, he knelt in prayer and thanked God for bringing Valjean to his home. But as each moment passed and evening turned into the deep night, Javert felt his unease grow. The Bishop’s brightness was as great as the current Valjean’s darkness. And yet the two forces remained each within its own realm, Valjean neither opening up his inner void to receive the Bishop’s light nor could the Bishop’s goodness penetrate into Valjean’s soul. Javert watched as Valjean fell asleep. Something wasn’t right. Where was the promised transformation?

When Valjean jolted awake in the middle of the night, his suspicions were confirmed. Valjean was yet unchanged, and he was plotting something even now. Frantic, Javert looked around the guest room and sought to locate anything that could indicate a turning point for the vile creature sitting on the edge of the bed contemplating evil. But the clock tower chimed as if giving Valjean the needed signal, and he rose from the bed, stealing into the Bishop’s bedroom.

Valjean loomed over the sleeping Bishop. The clouds outside parted at this moment, sending in a ray of moonlight to illuminate the sleeping man’s face. Valjean took off his cap in an unexpected act of reverence. Javert found himself praying for heaven’s light to finally enter that black soul. But Valjean was deep in thought and Javert suddenly _knew_ , as clear as day, that Valjean was considering murder. A shudder seized his entire body. He was looking at a man utterly beyond redemption. This man belonged in the bagne forever; he deserved no charity.

He watched—immensely relieved—as Valjean inexplicably decided against taking a life and instead walked past the bed toward a cupboard, finding and turning the key to unlock a treasure trove full of silver; he claimed the Bishop’s silver for his own. Javert watched as Valjean fled into the night and felt his hope drained from him with each step the criminal took, whether up the wall he was scaling or out into the fields as he ran with all his might and soon became a speck that disappeared into the night. He knew Valjean didn't remain wretched, but if it didn’t happen this night at the house of the Bishop whom he spoke so fondly of, then when? The night stretched on and the Bishop’s sleep was peaceful, the slumber of a righteous man. Javert’s mind turned to the police file he once read on Valjean and he shuddered, questioning whether he truly knew Valjean. The Bishop hadn’t reported the theft. Was Javert to believe that Valjean, even after he had turned into a good man, lived his entire life carrying the secret of yet another concealed crime?

Javert remained by the Bishop as he woke, discovered the theft, and simply asked the two women in the house to henceforth use utensils of wood. Javert alone was startled among his present company when violent knocking disturbed their quiet morning meal and Valjean was dumped, kneeling and head bent, before the Bishop by policemen who had captured him on suspicion of theft. Javert stared, unsure what he wanted for Valjean as thoughts warred within him. _Have mercy_ , his heart begged, even as his mind scoffed in a self-righteous voice that men like Valjean could never change.

 _Not yet_ , his heart answered back, _not yet_.

The Bishop made the decision for both him and the gendarmes. Javert watched as the saint spoke kindly to one he called brother, turned the stolen silver into gifts, and bought Valjean’s soul for God with the additional gift of his silver candlesticks. Javert wanted to see in those half-comprehending eyes the birth of a good man, but as Valjean skulked back into open roads with a heavy sack in hand, Javert still saw an unrepentant sinner, a scared soul who had been burnt by a too-bright light. Valjean didn’t display a shred of gratitude toward the Bishop. In fact, he displayed no emotion, his eyes dull and his face passive. What anguish he may have been feeling was anchored in self-pity.

Javert didn’t understand. This was nothing like how he imagined Valjean’s moment of salvation would be. He was forced to admit that he was still looking at an unchanged man. A thief and an almost-murderer. A man with no goodness in him.

What had gone wrong?

-

Javert looked at Valjean’s face and all he could think of was _despicable_. Robbing a silver coin from a child? He watched as Valjean turned a deaf ear to the chimney boy’s plea and refused to lift his foot. He watched as the boy fled in tears and terror while Valjean remained unmoved. He turned away when Valjean remained in a stupor, his bag full of stolen silver and his heart empty of even an ounce of goodness that the Bishop had shown him earlier that day. He didn’t wait around to see what Valjean was about to do when he would emerge from his trance-like state. What else would a monster completely devoid of a conscience be capable of except for more vileness and sin?

-

The mysterious Providence guiding his dreams refused to let Javert flee too far. He was brought back to the Bishop’s home. It was nighttime once again, the same early hours before dawn when a day ago Valjean had committed his crime.

He saw a prostrate form outside the door. A man was kneeling there, shaking at every limb, crying. It was Jean Valjean.

Despite what he had seen earlier, Javert couldn’t turn away. Valjean had come to mean too much to him; it would be wrong to abandon him now. And so he approached—carefully, not without hesitation—clinging onto the knowledge of Jean Valjean in the future, and hovered over the weeping man.

“I… I don’t know… I can’t…” Valjean repeated over and over in between sobs, half-formed prayers of a lost soul who wanted a different life but didn’t know how to attain it. “I don’t know. God, I… I don’t… I can’t…”

His heart ached for the man, but his mind wanted to be sure this wasn’t desperation borne out of some sense of indignation toward fate, for even convicts at the bagne were known to cry like this after suffering assault from other convicts or from a particularly traumatizing punishment. Without fail, those convicts’ hearts would emerge from the wallowing more hardened, as if their souls had evaporated along with their tears.

“I don’t know… I can’t…”

But Valjean was back at the door of the one he robbed. This was no evasion of responsibility. Had he tried to find the chimney boy to return the silver piece to him? If he did, Javert surmised the attempt must not have been successful. For Valjean appeared utterly lost, his every hiccup and wet sob bearing witness to his admitted helplessness. If he could see Javert now, how would he react? Fear and terror, for certain. But Javert was almost sure that if he were to approach Valjean as Prison Guard and Inspector at this precise moment, Valjean would not fight him.

“Please, I know I… I just don’t know… can’t…”

No, Valjean wasn’t raging against the heavens. Here was a man begging for a new life, undeserving and lost, but desiring nothing more than a fresh start.

 _I don’t know_ , he said over and over. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know how to change.

So even someone as saintly as Jean Valjean had once felt utterly lost as to how to take his first steps of faith.

Javert felt his thoughts toward Valjean soften. He suddenly knew that this Valjean, with his newly formed conscience still so fragile and vulnerable, would give anything to have never stolen from the Bishop or the chimney boy. His tears spoke of the bitterness of mortals who couldn’t turn back time. But the Bishop had given him courage, if not to face him again by knocking on the door, then at least to face the future, to cultivate that new conscience until it flourished into a fount that gave life to others. Javert’s mind thought forward to the lives Valjean would save from a fire on his first day entering Montreuil-sur-Mer, the first known deed of one who would come to be known as Madeleine, and knew that during those silent years between here and Montreuil, Valjean had never once deviated from walking in the path of faith.

Javert knelt beside Valjean as he wept. He felt no disdain for the broken man. _Repentance is a long journey. There is no shame in that_ , Valjean’s voice reminded him, pointing a finger at his younger self as if to show Javert what he had meant at the Seine. Javert looked, obeying the future Valjean, and kept watch over this younger Jean Valjean that was still a _not yet_ , who was only now lifting a foot to take his first step on his long journey of repentance.

Perhaps they weren’t so different after all. Javert removed his hat and stared at the color of judgment he’d been given. The color of _not yet_. It should have been green, he mused, would have been green if he were his own judge. But he no longer believed himself to be the best interpreter of laws. He knew he would have deemed Valjean who stole from the Bishop as forever lost. But if the Bishop had condemned him back to the bagne, then there would be no Madeleine, no mercy for Jacques, no father to Cosette, and certainly no rescuer of Javert. There was so much more to Valjean than the reoffending criminal. Was it possible—he resisted the urge to push the thought away—that there was more to Javert the Ghost than an eternally condemned soul?

He watched as morning brought light onto Valjean's face. The sun was rising.

Valjean seemed to have come to a decision as he stood, with hope though no less uncertainty in his eyes, and embarked on a journey that was no longer guided by his parole papers, but by two precious candlesticks.


	7. The beginning of eternity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert makes several final discoveries. Is he ready to go home?

The Bishop’s house grew smaller as if it were being pulled away from Javert’s mind and back into the time when it belonged, and Javert closed his eyes, waiting for the invisible hand that had been guiding him to bring him back to the Seine.

-

He woke up in neither Toulon nor Montreuil and—he strained his ears for sounds of people bustling about or for the rushing water, _any_ sound—this was certainly not Paris. He looked around at what his mind could only interpret as empty space. The space was… bright. But Javert wasn’t suspended in thin air—he transferred his weight onto one foot to confirm he was standing on a surface of some sort. This was brightness with substance, and it reminded him of the concept of morning: the interweaving of dawn’s light with birdsongs and the smell of dew-drenched grass, ingredients needed for the tapestry of a new day that would be incomplete without each strand. Wrapped in this tapestry of light, Javert’s heart felt full—complete. _Wholeness_. Yes, that was the word he was trying to find.

Javert looked down. He was standing on the beginning of a straight road that led into the depths of this realm of light. But the path itself posed no restriction; Javert instinctively knew he could walk sideways if he chose, and it would be allowed him. No, the path was merely here to guide. He took a tentative step forward. The brightness felt solid under his feet. He took another step. Then another.

At the third step, his body hit against an invisible wall. The wall wasn’t punishing and Javert fancied himself walking into a giant spider’s web. The words _not yet_ entered his mind without bidding, and Javert was content to turn back, to retrace his three steps until he was once again standing at the beginning of the path. He didn’t resent the limitation. It was as if he’d always known he could go no further.

Though maybe one day, he could go in. Time didn’t seem to have meaning here, but Javert knew he was still traveling on a different journey that must first be completed before he could embark on this new one. There was no hurry; he could take as long as he needed. Whether he required one more day or one more century, this new path would be here, waiting for him. He cast another glance into the distance, where the path disappeared into a point in the horizon. The yearning inside him whispered _home_. He’d been far away from home all his life, and he suddenly longed to enter in.

Not yet, he repeated to himself. These words had come up often lately, he thought, as images of a river and candlesticks flitted through his mind. It suddenly reminded him of the color red.

As he looked out into the path, Javert spotted something coming toward him. It first registered as a speck that contrasted with the light around it. It then grew in size from a dot to an outline of a man; as the man approached, Javert could make out a familiar face. This was Jean Valjean, a name he had known for decades and which at different times had meant something different to him. His heart could no longer hold onto the more negative associations such as mistrust and contempt; in this place, all he could feel toward this man was love. Javert looked at this person with Jean of Faverolles’ hair and Madeleine’s smile—a perfected being inside an immortal body. If Valjean was walking _out_ toward something, then it must mean…

Javert was dreaming of heaven.

He followed Valjean, as he always did, stepping away from the edge of the path and into familiarity: heaven’s entryway, in the shape of a door that had been etched into his mind for decades from seeing it from the other side. Valjean stopped at the entrance, looking out. Javert followed his gaze.

He saw himself standing guard over the Seine. His form was correct and his posture impeccable, but Javert knew he was looking at a broken man. This man held his head high because lowering it would bring back painful memories of gazing into the waters in the last moment of his life. He’d made the decision to jump twice, once alone and the other time in the presence of a mysterious man. He was sure of his actions then. But now… Javert realized it had been decades since he was last able to look down into the river.

Feeling a sudden need for support, Javert floated closer to Valjean and felt that familiar warmth again. It was as if Valjean made this heavenly realm more complete: dawn’s light, birdsong, dew drops on grass, and _warmth_.

Valjean was whole and he had everything he needed here. Why was he looking out at Javert?

He was relieved to see the lack of pity on Valjean’s countenance; Javert refused to be pitied. Valjean was interested, but this interest wasn’t piqued by fascination with an abnormal curiosity. He was genuinely intrigued as to how Javert was faring. Not well—that much was evident even at first glance. But whereas a disinterested observer would draw this quick conclusion and walk away, Jean Valjean lingered.

Javert thought he saw longing in those kind eyes. Valjean was content, yes—his forehead was clear from perpetual worry and whatever guilt he had borne in life had been entirely lifted from him. But Javert looked at Valjean and the one word he could think of was _incomplete_. Was he waiting for someone, Cosette perhaps? But if all parents waited for their children, then why was Valjean the only one at heaven’s door? Surely Monsieur Gillenormand would be among those most eagerly awaiting their loved one’s arrivals…

Trailing his eyes between Valjean and himself, an uneasy feeling began to take shape inside him. Concern, flashes of sadness, a hint of smile when he saw Javert’s still form springing into action whether he turned around to look to the streets of Paris or greeted a passing soul, the occasional sigh—these were signs well beyond a saintly man’s desire to see a trapped soul freed into eternal glory. This was Jean Valjean, desiring _him_.

He didn’t understand it, didn’t understand why. But to know that there was someone who wanted him in heaven, who wanted _him_ , this thought was both terrifying and exhilarating.

There was one more thing. The manner with which Valjean was beholding him, it was… familiar. It was as if Javert had seen Valjean on a thousand faces before. But his racing heart was thumping too loudly in his ears for proper thought, and so he contented himself with watching Valjean watching him, letting the odd reality take root in his heart.

Valjean watched until his counterpart fell asleep on the Seine. When he turned to walk back inside heaven, Javert could see relief there, as if Valjean believed sleep would give a temporary reprieve to his suffering. Javert sent Valjean into the light with his eyes.

It wasn’t until Valjean had gone that he realized it had been decades since he was last able to sleep. How long had Valjean been looking at him like this?

-

Javert woke to Valjean’s face inches from his and Valjean’s arms wrapped around his body. He tried to turn his head and ended up burying his face into a shoulder. He breathed in the scent of Valjean, which brought back memories of Toulon and Montreuil and also of a bright realm of lights. Yes, he must have just completed one of his sleep-induced journeys.

Valjean’s face tinged red as he loosened his arms in attempt to hide away unwanted evidence, but realized just in time that this would mean letting Javert fall onto the water and so he tightened his grip again. Javert, for his part, pretended it wasn’t out of the ordinary to be cradled in Valjean’s arms like a child.

“Did I sleep long?” he asked, tearing his eyes away from Valjean to glance at the Pont au Change. Paris’ streets were still agitated and everything appeared the same. It could have been a day or a year, he couldn’t tell.

“No more than a few hours,” Valjean answered. “You toppled over as we were speaking—I caught you as you fainted. I’m relieved to know that it was sleep, not illness.” He smiled. “Forgive me. I didn’t want to leave you unconscious on the Seine.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, I should thank you,” Javert said.

Valjean was closer than he had ever been. The thought triggered that familiar niggle that was tugging at his mind again. He twitched his lips into a small smile in his best attempt to reassure Valjean, but inwardly Javert frowned, trying to put a name on the elusive realization that had formed during his heavenly dream but had yet to fully take shape.

“You looked troubled in your sleep,” Valjean prompted, letting his concern show. “In the beginning, that is. Your slumber became more peaceful as the hours passed. Did – did anything disturb you?”

Javert remembered his first dreams. “I saw the Bishop.”

Valjean went completely still. “Ah,” he said.

Javert knew Madeleine’s feigned nonchalance well, that surface mildness that could mask a multitude of instincts and reactions. The unguarded warmth that was so present in those eyes mere moments ago was replaced by terror; the man was fully expecting rejection. Javert’s outer hand fastened itself in a vise-like grip on Valjean’s wrist as he was attempting to withdraw his arms. No, the days of M. Madeleine were long over. He wouldn’t let Valjean shut himself away again.

“Valjean, listen to me, it doesn’t matter what I saw. You were –”

“You have seen the worst of me then.”

Javert wanted to deny it. No, he’d seen the purchase of a soul for God, the birth of something good. But he knew this wasn’t what Valjean meant.

“I have.”

Valjean forced a strained smile. His eyes unconsciously went to their joined hands, and Javert could read every word in his silent question: _Aren’t you going to pull away?_ Javert held on firmer.

Trapped like this, Valjean was open to Javert’s scrutiny. There was that look again, Jean Valjean on a thousand faces. This time, he noticed trepidation among the mixture of emotions. But even this was familiar, the holding out of hope when faced with possible rejection. He’d seen it before…

But this was not the time to dwell on the matter. Valjean looked oddly fragile and Javert knew he needed to pull him out of a very unpleasant day from his past and bring him back into the present. “I have also seen you at your best,” he said. “The you that you are now. In your full glory.”

“Do you mean –”

“After I visited your younger self at the Bishop’s home, I was transported there –” Javert tilted his head toward paradise. “– inside. And there you were by the door’s entrance, looking out at me.”

Javert expected anything from relief to the return of Valjean’s unflappable calmness, but not this—the reddening of his ears that spread within seconds to his cheeks and down his neck. “I apologize,” he mumbled, “I didn’t mean to intrude –”

“Valjean, cease apologizing!”

The man closed his mouth.

Javert shifted off Valjean’s warm body and pulled himself to a sitting position. He looked past Valjean and into the Pont au Change, giving the mortified man space to recover; he didn’t let go of Valjean’s hand.

There was a man and a woman on the bridge—lovers in every sense judging by the way they carried themselves. They looked as if they were making promises to each other. Javert had seen the making of vows thousands of times by thousands of lovers over the years, and –

Why, of course, he _had_ seen Valjean on a thousand faces before.

Inside heaven, Jean Valjean wore the face of a lover believing his sentiment to be unrequited.

“You care that I am unhappy here,” Javert said in his best matter-of-fact tone as he kept looking at the bridge, making confessions for both of them. He didn’t ask for confirmation; there was no need to.

Valjean drew in a ragged breath and let it out in a half sigh, half laugh. “It may sound foolish, Javert, but I have become very fond of you simply by watching you all these years.”

If this was foolishness, then Javert was the bigger fool.

He gathered enough courage to turn toward Valjean and saw hope gradually winning over doubt in that warring face.

“What makes you think the same didn’t happen to me?” he said quietly, as if louder words would chase Valjean away. “I’ve been watching you for years. I’ve been shown parts of your entire life. Do you think that had no impact on me? You are kind and you are generous, and I’ve admired you for a long time.” He paused, sliding his hand from Valjean’s wrist to his hand. “But there is more than admiration –”

He nudged Valjean’s hand open, pressing a thumb in a circular motion over the palm. Death had retained the callous formed by a life of labor. Javert cherished the rough skin that spoke so much of the man’s strength. Valjean opened his mouth but no sound came out; his breath hitched, his eyes were ablaze. Transfixed, Javert caressed the hand some more; he watched Valjean’s throat constrict, the muscles there working their way up and down.

“You held my hand at the hospital, when I was unconscious, after that bandit incident at Montreuil-sur-Mer,” he murmured. “What was going through your mind?”

Valjean looked as if he were reliving that moment, recalling the way his inspector had been injured and how, despite Javert’s unconsciousness, the gesture he extended in secret had now become known. “I wanted you safe,” Valjean admitted.

Javert gave him a small smile.

“And I, after having seen you in my dreams, your worst and your very best… I want you –”

He lifted his eyes to Valjean.

It took Valjean a long moment to realize Javert had already said all he’d meant to say.

Their hands were still joined when they watched the sunset together.

-

He saw himself walking away from the Rue de l’Homme Armé with determined steps, the intention to submit two resignations written clearly on his face: one to man and the other to God. He watched until his counterpart disappeared into the distance. Here he was again, back on this fateful summer day for the third time, and not a thing was going to change.

Instead of reliving what he knew would happen, Javert lingered, then floated up the stairs and into Valjean’s home.

He kept his distance as Valjean drew a bath to clean himself from the grime of the sewers; he didn’t hover too closely when Valjean and Cosette talked. He stayed near the door when Valjean stood frozen by the window until the sky had turned dark, not quite daring to believe that Javert had finally let him go.

Javert knew Valjean still had him on his mind when he settled into an armchair with a book. Weary hands turned to a random page, and Valjean sighed, using the book as an excuse to stare. The candlelight danced on the man’s face; it didn’t reach the text.

He sat like this for hours; several times, Javert thought he was asleep only to spot Valjean’s lips move, shaping those familiar words of prayer. Javert looked out the window. The positions of the stars told him that it was past midnight. His counterpart would be gazing at these same stars now, seconds away from tending his resignation to God. Javert felt sad at his own choice. He could admit it now, after all these years: he had made a mistake, one that he had come to deeply regret.

Valjean sighed again, drawing Javert out of his self-recrimination. The man had given up on pretending to read.

“I’m afraid…” Valjean’s head was bowed, but Javert could hear each whispered syllable. “He is lost. Please help him. Please show him the way.”

Valjean’s words burned at his heart. He’d heard them before. In fact, his counterpart, drowning in the Seine, was hearing these same words now. They formed the very request that heaven had decided to honor, draining water from his lungs and mending his body and—Javert was sure of this—snatching him out of the clutches of hell.

God always answers Valjean’s prayers, even when the lost soul in his petition was Javert.

“Thank you,” he whispered to an unhearing Valjean, just as he had done so many other times. The thought of heaven seared brightly in his mind. No, he didn’t deserve paradise, he never would. But Valjean was there and he was waiting for him. Hope flared in his heart. He now had a reason to finally go home.

-

He didn’t know precisely when it happened, but when the wind blew his hat into his arm one day, he saw that its color had reverted from red to black. When he finally realized it was time to move on, the Seine no longer confined him. While approaching the light, the only resistance he experienced was his own hesitance, that lingering trace of doubt that weighed down his boots and weighed down his heart even more from fear of disappointment, of being turned away.

He heard voices even before he crossed the threshold.

“Did I not tell you he will make it before my Marius?”

“What’s the ‘spector doing ‘ere? Eh, as long as it’s not my horrid parents, it’s fine with me.”

“Hush, Gavroche. It’s not like he’s a bad man. We just fought on different sides of the revolution, that’s all.”

“So who’s welcoming him then? What if he barks at us?”

“He’s not a dog! I’m sure he’ll be civil. First impression in heaven and all.”

“I’m not sure if I can put away my first impression on earth of him from all those years back. Say, Fantine, how are you not mad at him?”

“We’re in heaven, all wrongs are forgiven. Besides, my concern at the time was Cosette, and Monsieur Jean here has raised her perfectly.”

“Is he here? Oi, there you are! I nominate Monsieur Jean to play tour guide. Who’s with me?”

“The one the ‘spector chased all his life? Grantaire, I never thought you’d be so cruel!”

“I’m not cruel. You missed it, that time when he walked outside to be with the Inspector. See, here he comes, he clearly wants to do it. Hey, who’s pulling my sleeve – ‘ponine?”

“Really, all of you. I think we should clear out of the way and leave Monsieur Jean alone. Now!”

The voices fluttered away. As Javert approached, he felt a presence looming by the doorway and knew at once that this was the same man with the not-kind voice who had sentenced him to a half-life upon the Seine. He also realized that this presence had been with him all along, the invisible guide who had been tugging at his heart, both the unyielding accuser of his conscience and the granter of moments of grace. Most of all, this presence had directed his dreams to always find Valjean.

Javert didn’t know which aspect of this man awaited him. Would he once again seek to exact justice, holding the law to Javert’s face—the very same law that he had failed to perfectly uphold? Or would he be merciful? Javert harbored no illusion that if he were to be tried for a second time, he’d still be found wanting. And yet he desired to enter, and so he stood before this judge, as an offender who, this time, dared to hope for mercy.

The presence regarded him, and Javert waited.

Then, the familiar chill of a guiding hand (not an accusing finger) reached out to him. He felt a gentle brush against his mind and knew that at this precise moment, all his shortcomings and shame had been taken away. Javert gasped—his first intake of breath as someone who had been completely cleansed. Joy filled his heart, and he knew immediately he was mirroring what the presence was already feeling, the happiness of a proud parent delighting in his child. Javert felt a smile directed his way. _Welcome_ , the smile said. The presence then nodded and disappeared. Heaven’s entryway lay open before him; he was free to enter in.

Javert took a final step and allowed the blinding light to engulf him.

-

“Hey.”

Valjean is standing before him. Valjean is smiling. Valjean’s hands are twisting at his hat. Valjean is solid. Valjean is real.

“Valjean.”

Valjean’s eyes are all joy and gladness, but there is also uncertainty there, as if Javert’s is a face from childhood that is familiar enough to catch his attention but no longer so recognizable after the intervening years. Suddenly feeling conscious of himself, Javert raises a hand to his face, feeling his whiskers, brushing his thumb over his sideburn. Everything feels softer, less coarse from the years that age has roughened into spines of white and gray.

“You look good.”

Yes, of course. Heaven must have given him a new body. Having only Valjean as his mirror, he supposes ‘good’ will have to be a sufficient description for now, of what he guesses to be a younger appearance that at the same time retains the knowledge and experiences that he has accumulated over the years.

But altered appearance or not, there is absolutely no reason why Valjean should be standing right in front of him and pointing out the obvious.

Valjean’s hands worry his hat some more. “Good to see you,” he says.

Javert rolls his eyes. He has waited decades for this moment. He will not have his wait prolonged by Valjean’s sudden coyness. Marching forward, he places a hand on each side of Valjean’s face and brings their lips together.

He can feel the contour of Valjean’s lips, his smile. And then, those lips part. Valjean is kissing back, and it feels… incredible.

Strange to think that his first act in heaven would be one borne of love. Or perhaps it is not so strange after all.

“I wish I had known to do this to you in life,” Javert says when they pull apart.

“No regrets here, Javert. We’ll make new memories together.” Valjean takes his hand. “Come, let me show you around. I think there’s a place you would love to see.”

Places to see. The uncomfortable thought surfaces on its own: If Valjean thinks he can escort Javert to a strange place and then leave him behind –

“I’ll still be around, don't worry. But first, let me bring you to the one person who’s been waiting for you most earnestly all this time.”

Even without elaboration, Javert knows. It has been over a hundred years since he has last interacted with his mother. And if she still hasn’t given up on him after all this time, then he is ready to spend eternity to make things right again between them.

“Though, perhaps, we can take supper together afterwards?” Valjean asks, hopes.

Javert decides he likes the look of Valjean with a flushed face.

“Yes, supper tonight,” he agrees. They have all of eternity to get to know each other.

He looks ahead into the light and squeezes Valjean’s hand. “Lead on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the end -- Javert has made it, yay! Thank you so much for reading and for offering kudos and feedback along the way. Thank you also for your patience as the story grew another chapter (it always seems to happen regardless of how much planning I do lol). I really appreciate your encouragements. Please let me know what you think!


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